


Träumen

by dehautdesert



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Family Gatherings, Don't Try This At Home, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubious Ethics, Honestly Leo What Are You Thinking, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insanity, Kidnapping, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Multi, Multiple Personalities, Past Child Abuse, Past Conversion Therapy, Suicide Attempt, Violence, horrible things happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:19:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 51,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(S3 SPOILERS... SORT OF)</p>
<p>Being asked to accompany your ex-girlfriend as her pretend-boyfriend for the duration of an unavoidable gathering with her twisted family in a mansion in rural Italy should have all the hallmarks of a wacky adventure in the making. But the situation Leo finds himself in this time is deadly serious and deeply dangerous, and even if he, Lucrezia and her sister get though these few days unscathed, the consequences of this encounter will be far more serious than he ever imagined when he agreed to come.</p>
<p>After all, you generally don't expect to fall in love with said ex-girlfriend's cousin on such an occasion. Especially when your first sight of him is with his arms wrapped neatly in a straitjacket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eden

**Author's Note:**

> I originally had this idea ages and ages ago, but watching S3 has made it a lot less cracky, and wanting to get at least the start of it out before the series ends and breaks my heart has probably rushed it somewhat. (but on the other hand I keep getting told by my writer friends I need to make things more fast paced. No doubt readers of this fic will be saying '/this/ is what she considers 'rushed'!?' to themselves as they go). All credit to Agatha Christie for giving me the idea about the crazy will; I know any Miss Marple fans will know what I'm talking about ;)
> 
> You may have questions about how show-canon fits into this AU. Honestly... so do I. We'll see how things go, hopefully. No specific warnings for this chapter, but next time things will probably get pretty interesting, and I'm hoping for 4-5 chapters in all. Enjoy!

 

*~*~*

 

"It's only a few days," Lucrezia told them; the first confident thing she'd said in a long string of sentences started and left to trail off that, stitched together, had served to illustrate her situation as best she could given her clear and understandable distress.

It almost sounded like she was trying to reassure herself more than Leo with that tone of voice. Her eyes were averted, off towards the washing machine—and guiltily too, as if she thought she was downplaying the situation to get him to agree.

On the one hand, it was just going with her to a family gathering she couldn't get out of—big deal, right? On the other, she was the one who knew what they'd theoretically be getting into, and he trusted her enough he knew he should have thought her fear justified.

Zoroaster broke the ensuing stillness in the room by sauntering past the table to snatch up a few more pretzel sticks.

"Don't worry," he said. "I think we can all survive without the great Leonardo for a few days. Some of us might even get some work done for a change."

Leo rolled his eyes, as did most of the other occupants of their rather Bohemian loft-conversion, but where a quip about what work Zo might have gotten up to in his absence would ordinarily have come to him as easily as breathing did, looking at Lucrezia's face the way it looked in that moment—the face of the woman he loved. Had loved. Did?—it made him genuinely concerned.

He knew there were family issues, of course. The impression he'd had was that Lucrezia's father had been one of those love-them-from-afar fathers who often presided over families of extreme wealth; phone calls on weekends, sporadic face-time visits, and frequent expensive gifts, but little understanding between them. And though Lucrezia had neither confirmed nor denied his suspicions on the matter, he was almost certain at some point there'd been a rather serious falling out between her and her father.

Of course, if Leo had spent more time talking _to_ her, and less _at_ , with his usual accurate but blunt amateur psychoanalyses, they may have been able to work out that whole relationship thing, or at the very least avoided so much broken crockery.

"I still don't understand how this all works," Vanessa interjected, frowning as Giuliano handed her the bottle for their little canvas-destroying monster. Probably hoping they were going to have another projectile-vomiting incident, the smug wanker, so Leo brought himself quickly to his feet to fetch the protector for the one uncovered piece that was in the room (on the other side of it, but you couldn't underestimate those Medici genes) while Vanessa spoke. "Your grandmother can just summon you all from beyond the grave to celebrate her birthday?"

Lucrezia rubbed her brow. "It's the will," she said. "My grandmother was... well, she made old Cosimo look saintly by comparison, from what I can gather."

"No small feat," muttered Giuliano, punctuating the remark with a gulp of wine.

"—and the will she set up was... complicated. Basically, none of the money is released until either my father or my uncle dies, but neither of them actually get any of it—it's supposed to be divided equally between their offspring; said offspring comprising of me, my sister, and our cousin."

"And in order to be eligible all three of you have to gather to celebrate her birthday, every two years until either your father or your uncle dies?" Vanessa said.

Yes, when you put it like that, it _almost_ sounded completely mad.

"It's more complicated than just that either," Lucrezia sighed, dejectedly. "According to the will, my father and uncle also have to attend. If either of them doesn't, their children are disinherited and the money all goes to the offspring of the other, immediately. Same if one of us doesn't show up, which means that if I don't go, not only do I get nothing, but so does my sister. Frankly, if it wasn't for that clause I'd probably have let the whole thing drop and damn that awful money, but I know she'll be there because father will be there." She took a deep breath. "And I'm not leaving her alone with the others. Even our father, she doesn't understand what he's like yet."

A single glance shared between them, and Zoroaster voiced what Leo was too cautious to say.

"Maybe it's time to explain it to her, then."

Just as he said it, Leo noticed him and Lucrezia share their own look, and felt his heart skip a beat. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed something; like a little light running along a wire from his eyes to hers—a connection between his best friend and his ex that amounted to more than a shared love for and exasperation with him.

Like the slow burn of a steady fire that would long outlast the wild blaze.

But now wasn't the time to think of that, as Lucrezia decided in regards to Zo's suggestion as well—as he'd known she would.

"You don't understand," she said, in that small, weak voice he hated. "You don't know what... well." A flash of sky-blue eyes glanced towards their other friends. She wasn't quite so close with them. "It's a long story. Suffice it to say the reason I realised my father was not the man I thought he was, was upsetting, and I don't want my sister to have to face anything like that this time around."

"It can't be legal though," Giuliano said, hand flying out to the side. "I mean the whole thing sounds ridiculous. What if neither you nor your cousin shows up?"

Lucrezia shrugged. "The money would go to the state, I suppose," she said. "But that would never happen. I might—I _hope_ —one day be able to convince Amelia to turn her back on that baggage, but Girolamo would never risk disappointing _daddy_."

With a raised eyebrow, Zo sat himself down next to Lucrezia and pulled the pretzel bowl to him. "Sounds like there might be some baggage right there too," he remarked.

Hand to forehead, Lucrezia shook her head. "Don't even ask," she muttered.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it was legal though," said Nico, adding himself to the conversation for the first time. "I mean, as you said it sounds ridiculous, but we looked at some pretty unusual inheritance disputes back when we did inheritance law last year. Some of the hoops the deceased made their beneficiaries jump through... well. I mean, it was their money, so it's their decision, but if you ask me people can be pretty sadistic."

"Hah," Lucrezia laughed humourlessly. "That was grandmother all right. And of all her children only the twins seemed to inherit that predisposition—none of the others have ever shown up to one of grandmother's post-mortem birthdays as far as I remember, even though _their_ children were also included in the will. Thought they were better off well-rid of the whole thing, I shouldn't wonder, and of my father and uncle altogether as well. I haven't seen a single one of them in years."

Leo's eyes narrowed, with interest. "Your father and uncle are twins?"

"Identical. Don't worry though, my father has a beard and my uncle never does so you wouldn't have trouble telling them apart." Her sudden intake of breath told Leo she'd only just realised what she'd implied. "If you were willing to come along, I mean. I don't want to make it sound like I expect that from you; in fact I know I probably shouldn't be asking it at all—"

"No, no," Leo assured her, though he hadn't committed to the idea yet. "I'd hate to think I was the kind of man who was any less pissed off at a fucked up situation like this because it was happening to someone I ended a relationship with." He tried to sound light-hearted, and added—"Never mind the fact I've wanted to meet your sister outside of Skype for ages anyway. Does she know we... ?"

"Mm-mm," Lucrezia said, shaking her head. "To be honest I think she'll be almost as upset as I was."

Amelia could indeed be... sensitive, from what Leo could garner. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Not in these circumstances anyway.

"I'm sure once she actually meets him she'll realise you could do much better, eh?" said Zo cheerfully.

Refusing to allow himself to make even an insincere comparison between himself and Zo in answer to that while he was still unsure if that was how that relationship was progressing, Leo only spread his arms and declared;

"What can I say? Not all mere mortals have the intuition necessary to appreciate my greatness."

Giuliano threw a cracker at him.

"Very mature," Leo appraised, with a withering look the other man simply brushed off with a grin.

The important thing was it made Lucrezia laugh a little though, as Zo put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, darling," he said—a casual use of the word he might as easily have applied to Vanessa, but it caught Leo's attention nonetheless. "Even if His Excellence over here has better things to do, I don't mind coming along for the ride."

Leo saw Lucrezia's brow furrow as she considered this for a moment—he inferred from her immediate reaction she thought it was a bad idea, but something else made her question that thought a moment later, and it put something of a desperate glint in her eyes.

"... or not," Zo added, just a little put out.

"No," Lucrezia said quickly. "No, it's not that I don't appreciate the offer, or even that I wouldn't want to have you there but my father... the twins... they're two very different monsters. If I was going to risk bringing anyone to one of Grandmother's birthdays, it would have to be someone I was sure would understand how to handle both of them."

"It seems like they both scare you—" Giuliano observed.

_Well done, Captain Obvious_ , Leo managed to refrain from replying.

"—which one is the evil twin?"

"Both of them," said Lucrezia, with a glum look. "I used to think it was my uncle—he's volatile, unpredictable, just... blatantly evil, I can barely stand to breathe in the same room as him. My father is much, much more subtle and well-controlled, but at the end of the day... I honestly think he's a psychopath."

That sucked the air out of the room. Even the usually loudmouthed Giuliano was sensitive enough to say nothing.

Unsurprisingly the little monster was the first to break the silence, wailing loudly when he realised he wasn't being fed. Vanessa held him closer with a little rocking motion and Giuliano leant in to help her guide the bottle.

There was little point in offering ways for Lucrezia to help _herself_ out of her situation—she wasn't stupid, and if her estimation of the danger posed by these twins was high enough that she thought she couldn't handle them alone, then Leonardo believed it too. He knew for starters that they had a lot of money even without whatever was in their mother's will, and that meant power, and that made legal recourse for whatever they might have done—and he was assuming one or both of them had done something, it certainly sounded like they had—a lot more dubious a prospect for a group of students, jack-of-all-trades, and _artistes_ to pull off without equally powerful help.

(They had Lorenzo, true, but whether he'd go to bat for Lucrezia was even more dubious, considering their history).

That was also one of the reasons he believed these twins were dangerous people, because with so much money of their own, their apparent obsession with having their children inherit their mother's estate as well seemed based in some kind of unhealthy, overgrown sibling rivalry rather than concern for their children's future.

Well, maybe the uncle needed the money. Further research would be required, if he decided to go.

Though really, who was he trying to fool by pretending there was even a question about it?

"Is there nothing... the authorities can do about them?" Vanessa asked, at length. "I mean, do they just let people like that wander around doing whatever to whoever?"

"Mm, from what I've heard about her father—no offence—" Nico added the caveat hastily, "I'd hate to follow whatever tangled path leads to us finding out how much he _is_ one of the authorities."

Something else to think about, Leo supposed. The list of 'authorities' they'd pissed off in their time read like a child's height-chart marked in crayon on a wall, beginning with the very first and all-time classic: his own father. Although his was just a regular wanker, not really a comparison to Lucrezia's.

But there was always room on the wall for another mark.

He finished the wine that was in his glass. "Where did you say the house was—Tuscany?"

Lucrezia nodded. "Pretty remote location. No Wifi, at least not last time I was there, and terrible reception. There's a small town at the foot of the mountain that my family actually used to own in the old days, and a bus route that goes close to it, but I think I'm starting to babble now, so I'll stop talking about it."

"Oh, not at all," said Leo. "It sounds beautiful. Just the place for a genius artist to take a long weekend break. Or middle of the week break in this case, but you know what I mean."

Enough weight lifted from the stunned Lucrezia's head at that pronouncement that she lifted it right up, wide-eyed; with a pleading look that had been all she'd really have needed to show him from the outset to get his help.

"You—you mean you'll come?" she stuttered.

"And face down a pair of evil twins?" Leo grinned. "Now, would I turn down something like that?"

The look on Lucrezia's face became grave.

"I'm begging you, Leo; please don't underestimate them—neither one is above ruining a life for petty reasons and my uncle might just outright try to stab you or something if you get too much on his bad side."

So it was that bad, was it?

The warning dampened Leo's humour, but not by giving him any foreboding about the upcoming endeavour; rather by making his damned imagination run wild concerning what this person might have done to Lucrezia in the past.

And maybe this wouldn't have come as such a surprise if he'd paid her more attention than his projects over the course of their... no. No, he'd told himself he wasn't going to do that.

Things were better this way, he told himself. Again. Things were better when both of them had the chance for a better relationship, instead of resigning themselves to suffer through each other's (his) deficiencies, that they (he) were never going to change.

That was going to be the hardest part in doing this, he assured himself—not whatever psychopathic antics these two old farts were going to throw at him, but reminding himself that they would only be pretending to be together for the sake of Lucrezia's safety, when it was still so hard to convince himself they were better off just friends.

When it was just as hard _not_ to convince himself that if Lucrezia couldn't handle him for what he was—who the fuck could?

He sighed, realising he was being self-obsessed again, and so despite these anxieties he reached across the table and took her hand, couldn't help but glance at Zo before he looked her in the eyes and said—

"Lucrezia, I promise you I will not let anything happen to you, me, or your sister while we're at your family's house."

It would have been a far more powerful moment, if not for the peanut gallery.

"Don't forget you have obligations to my brother's company, da Vinci," Giuliano butted in, as helpful as always. Trust the younger of the Medici brothers to be _the best_ at reading a given moment.

Leo's shoulders plummeted, and he gave the strapping oaf who'd somehow had someone as vibrant as Vanessa's heart fall into his lap the least friendly smile he'd ever managed.

"Those obligations don't extend to the point of indentured servitude, Giuliano—I can still expect a few days off every once in a while."

"Oh, every 'once in a while' is it?" Giuliano shot back. "That's what you call a three-month sabbatical in Peru to look for some ancient—"

"Giuliano," Vanessa sighed, cutting him off as she shifted their son in her arms. "This is for Lucrezia's sake—you can't tell me these people don't sound dangerous; she obviously can't go alone."

Though a less generous soul might have said Giuliano caved in to avoid arguing with the mother of his child, Leo thought the look on his face that ensued from that to be more of acceptance than resignation, and fair's fair to Giuliano, he wasn't a bad guy at the end of the day.

"All right. But you'll take it as unpaid leave."

He was just... so annoying.

"Maybe her dad will offer to pay him to go away after he meets him?" Zo suggested cheerfully. "It's happened to me before."

Not that the bulk of his dearest friends couldn't be said to be on much the same level. Leo rolled his eyes.

"Don't worry about these idiots," he told Lucrezia. "It honestly won't be a problem. I stand by that promise to you, you know."

She smiled; unforced and all. Her sister's wellbeing meant everything to her; that much was unquestionable.

And it was one promise he would (sort of, kind of) keep.

But then, on that particular occasion the hurt that was to happened was lain in store for someone else.

 

*~*~*

 

"So your dad is CEO of some mega-corp, and your uncle runs his own private army?"

Funny how two weeks later Zoroaster had ended up being the one sitting next to Leo on the bus ride along the less-travelled road to the historical home of Lucrezia's family; while she sat in the row behind the two of them next to her travel bag.

Funny, because for once Leo hadn't dragged him along against his self-professed better judgement. He'd turned up at the airport and informed them he'd be staying in the small town as a tourist for the duration of the birthday celebrations—just in case Leo needed someone to run him some new paintbrushes, of course.

You never knew when you might need new paintbrushes, and for that reason Leo was frankly glad he'd come along.

" ' _Crossgate_ '," Lucrezia told them; the disgust evident in her voice. "He contracts out to several unsavoury sorts. I don't know that much about it, but I know they've been active in both the middle east and central Africa in the last decade. Apparently he makes ludicrous amounts of money."

That was the sad, sad way of the world, wasn't it?

Not that Leo wasn't open to creating designs of devices with possible military application, and not only because they were the most likely to fund his other endeavours (he wasn't the kind of man who could be bought just like that, at least), but he was fundamentally a humanist, and base profit from the horrors of modern warfare that enticed its profiteers to perpetuate hellish conflicts pissed him right off.

"Does he get work from the government?" asked Zo.

"As I said, unsavoury sorts. But you grow to expect that kind of thing from governments; the real shock was finding out one of my father's contractors had supplied them with parts used in military vehicles—which my father thought was hilarious as my uncle didn't realise he was buying from him for almost three years. That's how their relationship works."

Zo frowned, then asked, hesitantly, "Was that what made you realise that he wasn't exactly one of the good guys? That he'd contributed to your uncle's exploits against whatever poor bastards he's exploiting for a joke?"

Lucrezia shook her head tiredly. "No, that didn't happen until later. I was just a kid when he told me about selling parts to my uncle, and since he made it sound like a joke, I thought it was. I didn't understand the implications back then, only looking back at it..."

She shook her head again, eyes drifting towards the window and the sun-swept landscape beyond the road. They were close, according to Leo's calculations, and had long since driven out of the busier roads of urban Italy and into wine country. The rows upon rows of vines laden with dark grapes seemed somehow shaded darker than they should have been, given there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

In Lucrezia's eyes, those same unwelcome shadows filtered out her usual sparkle.

"Hey," Leo said. "I'm sure nothing happened there that would reflect badly on you—at least not in any reasonable person's mind. Even if you'd been more than a kid; a person has the right to expect a certain amount of trust in their own father."

Ignoring the cough from Zo through which he barely bothered to hide his declaration of, "Projection!", Leo reached over the top of the seat and put his hand on Lucrezia's shoulder. She smiled, but this time it was forced—as all her few smiles had been since they'd stepped off the plane.

Beside him, Zo shrugged off Leo's non-response to his ribbing and stretched his arms out with a soft groan; head tilting from side to side. All at once he stilled, dropped his arms and craned his neck around Leo's head.

"Is that it up ahead?" he asked.

Bother Leo and Lucrezia turned to look and Leo dropped his hand from her shoulder to lever himself up for a better look. Around the sloping curve of the steep hill on the other side of the road, a much steeper mountain was beginning to come into view. Not a big mountain as mountains went, but certainly a pretty one; mostly green and complimented by the small town—more of a large village, really—at its foot.

Leo could see the tower of an old church among the white stone buildings gleaming beneath red roofs. He'd have estimated about three hundred and fifty people lived down there.

"The old pile," said Lucrezia, less than fondly. "It looks so picturesque from here. I suppose it is, as much as anywhere—the land the town is on doesn't belong to the family anymore, so I doubt the twins bother them that much, but in the old days people still had to ask my grandmother for permission to marry."

"What, by law?" scoffed Zo.

"No, not by law, at least I shouldn't think so. But certainly if they didn't want to be ostracised from the community—my grandmother could make things very hard for the people who lived here. And I know my father and uncle still have their financial claws in a lot of the businesses. I hear rumours, sometimes..."

Her eyes flickered away from the town. They focussed again on the mountain and she pointed out at it.

"You can just about see the house up on the outcrop there—as the bus gets closer, look."

The sun's glare swept over the glass where she was pointing and Leo blinked and squinted out at the mountain. About a quarter mile out from the town and fifty metres up the mountain he could just make out the edge of a high stone wall on the rocky surface.

"That's part of the original building," Lucrezia continued. "From the fifteenth century, though it's mostly just that empty tower. There were a few years we played there as kids, but... Anyway, the rest of it's pretty modern."

Leo didn't press when she trailed off after mentioning playing in the tower as a child, though he wondered if she'd meant only her and her sister, or that cousin of hers too—Girolamo, who in comparison to the twins she'd been very tight-lipped about. That was especially interesting considering how tight-lipped she'd been about the twins.

Another curve in the road meant the bus turned in a way that let the mountainside cover up that brief view of the old stone wall, and Leo turned round and sat back in his seat, feeling a brief twinge of the apprehension that had been spiking at random intervals since they'd left New York. He sighed, and Zo squeezed his shoulder in camaraderie.

"Don't worry, genius," he drawled. "I'll protect you both if things go wrong."

"My, hero," said Leo sweetly. Lucrezia snorted in the row behind them, and the apprehension swiftly dissipated—no doubt to return soon enough, but they could always fight it off again should it come back now, couldn't they?

Soon enough the bus pulled into the station that sat at the end of the route—a small road that could probably have squeezed a car down it, but not a bus, branched off from the bay down in the direction of the house, while an even smaller footpath looked to head up the mountain.

The cusp of the Tuscan summer greeted them as they stepped off the bus—they had been the only ones on board by this point, save for the driver—and the bright sun gleaming off the white petals of the wayside flowers as a gentle breeze blew the dark waves of Lucrezia's hair around her face.

Those sable strands covered up the horror in her expression, that appeared in response to their other greeter at the lonely bus stop. An older man with silver hair and beard, and eyes like an eagle's.

"...Dad!" Lucrezia blurted out.

Leo stilled in the bus doorway, Zo behind him. He could see Lucrezia try to school herself into something closer to what one would expect a daughter to hadn't seen her father, literally in years, to present as during their reunion, and he could see her fail.

But the old man only acted as if she'd lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Daughter," he returned, jovially. He had a raspy voice; amiable and grandfatherly, which made him more unnerving in context of what Leo had already gleaned about him. It was because he couldn't suppress that instant feeling that hey—maybe Lucrezia had been wrong about this guy?

Leo trusted her too much to believe that instinct, hands gripping the rail along the side of the bus' steps when the man approached his daughter, arms open.

"I thought you were going to pick Amelia up and drive her to the house?" Lucrezia continued, accepting his embrace with blatant reluctance.

"I wanted to be here to greet you," her father protested. "Your sister's old enough to drive now, I let her take the car up to the house from the southern side."

Behind Leo, the driver cleared his throat and prompted him and Zo to clear a path so their luggage could be retrieved, as Lucrezia recovered enough from the suddenly stunned look on her face to stutter—

"Wh—what? You... you let her go up to the house on her own? But Alessandro will already be there!"

The look of terror on her face could have frozen blood.

Yet it seemed not to move her father a bit, "Oh, Lucrezia," he said. "I'm sure my brother can refrain from cooking her into a stew for the twenty minutes it will take to get up the mountain—" Lucrezia was shaking her head rapidly, "—at least, I hope so. Alessandro always was a terrible cook."

"Dad!"

"And this must be Leonardo da Vinci," continued the old man, heedless of his daughter's cries and with his hunter's eyes now fixed on Leo.

And now the instinct was to say the man was dangerous. Good, those instincts weren't completely useless after all. He accepted the hand that was offered to him with a few steps in the man's direction.

"Sir," he greeted him.

He chuckled. "Call me Francesco, dear boy, the family doesn't bother with titles any more. Did you have a good trip down?"

"Oh, it was good, thanks," said Leo. He caught the look in Lucrezia's eyes that silently begged him to do something and quickly added, "Shall we go straight on up? I've been dying to see the house after everything Lucrezia's said about it, and to meet Amelia—preferably in her pre-cooked state."

Francesco rolled his eyes and let go of Leo's hand.

"Don't mind my daughter, Leonardo," he said. "You must know what she's like by now, if she's brought you to this place—and I'm afraid my brother is a disagreeable sort, but there you have it. I'm sure you'll manage." He chuckled again, and his eyes landed on Zo. "Ah, don't tell me you brought _two_ boyfriends, Lucrezia. Your uncle might have a stroke and die, and then we wouldn't get to celebrate Nana's birthday like this. Wouldn't that be unfortunate?"

He winked at an increasingly desperate-looking Lucrezia, whose nails were digging ever more fiercely into the palms of her hands, so that Leo might have worried she was the one who was about to have a stroke, and he quickly smiled and said—

"Nothing quite so exciting, I'm afraid—we met Archie here for the first time on this bus; he's on a religious pilgrimage of the area."

Zoroaster would probably pour a drink over his head at the very least for that later, but it had the intended effect of calming Lucrezia—

Oh. Actually, no, it hadn't; now she looked just as angry at him as with her father. But it had had the intended effect of calming Leo, and hopefully Zo wasn't giving the truth away too easily.

"It was good to meet you both," said Zo, and he'd put on a ridiculous Russian accent that Leo was hard-pressed not to laugh at; likely in retaliation to Leo's own ridiculous lies.

It wasn't like it was essential to the plan that neither of the twins—or the cousin, Leo supposed—know they had a man in town, but it did leave certain possibilities open. In truth it wasn't even like they really had a plan at all, but then, Lucrezia had been so vague about the specifics of what she was afraid might happen and Leo hadn't been worried enough about two old men—and one young one, he supposed—to press for something she was obviously so uncomfortable with.

"Good to meet you too," he answered, shaking Zo's hand with a clap on the shoulder. "Enjoy the church."

"I'm sure I will. Miss Donati," he nodded to Lucrezia.

She nodded back, not even looking at him, and with that Zo went to pick up his hiker's rucksack from where the bus driver had tossed it out along with their other luggage, and started to head off down the small road to the town. The bus began to move just as he'd picked up the bag, turning around in the bay and heading back up the road they'd come in on.

Francesco looked towards the little footpath and back to Lucrezia again, holding his hand out in an invitation for her to take it.

"Shall we make our own move, my dear?" he asked.

Shoulders heaving, she stormed past him for her own rucksack and almost ran towards the path. Francesco was undaunted, moving the outstretched hand around to grasp Leo's own shoulder; a deceptively fatherly gesture given that his fingers dug in for a split second, making Leo flinch away as much from the surprise of it as from the pain.

"Never mind," he said. "You mustn't worry if she get's like this while you're here, she's more than a few bad memories of this place."

He herded Leo, whose mind flooded with thoughts and plots and strategies that sprung from what he'd just seen and were just as quickly discarded, in the same direction.

"But I expect she's told you all about that, given you're close enough for her to bring you with her. I must say, it's a long time since I first wanted to meet you."

Leo forced a false smile onto his face. "Well, the feeling is entirely mutual there, I assure you," he said.

Francesco patted the shoulder he'd dug his talons into and finally dropped his hand. He waited until the sudden breeze died down before replying.

"It will be good to have you staying here—remind us all to behave ourselves, so cut off from the rest of the world." He laughed. "It's a beautiful place, as you can see; perfect for an artistic type, if I do say so myself, but I don't think it's on a single map. When my mother had her stroke we had to take her down into the town in a wheelbarrow in order to get her to the ambulance."

Summer faded a little, in that moment.

The words were cheerful as ever, even wheezed out in a voice that spoke of too many years inhaling tobacco through an old-fashioned wooden pipe. But the message was clear enough.

_'Don't even think about trying to call for help out here'._

 

*~*~*

 

As Lucrezia had said the only truly historical part left of the building that comprised her family home was the one tower and part of the wall that lead down the multi-storey garden. Said garden was, in Leo's opinion, actually a far more impressive sight than the modern part of the house—which was fair enough in its blinding white faux art-deco style, but in no way fit into the landscape.

A shame really. Though with the huge glass panels that looked to have covered the entire front of the house in a tall set of French doors, the light in the interior must have been fantastic, especially considering it was summer—and the roof looked accessible from one of the upper balconies, so he was looking forward to seeing what the view from up there looked like.

The garden was, as he'd said, the triumph of the grounds, however. Leonardo was no expert, but the Japanese-inspired layout and content run through with roses on every one of the five levels that were coloured from milk-white at the top along the walls of the house, to blood-red at the bottom as they came through the gate, made a beautiful and somehow eerie picture.

Now, the long staircase he could have done without, but he supposed that was nitpicking. He shifted his bag on his shoulders as he climbed, following Lucrezia and her father and feeling the return of that apprehension in a more concentrated form than before.

It was shamefully not until he got to the middle level that he noticed the guards, stationed on either end of the house all in black, berets and sunglasses and all, and—his heart skipped a beat—armed with automatic weapons.

Leo didn't know whether to be thankful or alarmed that Lucrezia stopped and dug her heels in at the sight of them—having clearly not expected this. Her shoes scraped bits of gravel against each other and there was yet more terror on her face when she turned to her father.

"Dad!?" she hissed.

Francesco only chuckled. "Oh, don't mind them, my dear—they're Crossgate. Apparently your uncle's had a few more genuine sounding threats recently and brought them for protection; he told me in advance."

"And you couldn't have told us in advance!?"

"I'm afraid it slipped my mind, Lu-Lu."

"Don't call me that."

The bitterness with which that last sentence was delivered was quite something when you remembered it came a few seconds after the shock of seeing the men with ridiculously big guns standing in front of the house.

More than that, though, Leo turned to look at Francesco when he didn't immediately laugh off his daughter's words as he'd been doing their entire trek up the mountain, and saw a flicker of anger there—or maybe something too cold to be called anger, one of those brief impressions of malevolence he'd seen three times now since meeting the man.

So he quickly injected himself into the conversation, and said, "This is great, actually."

Even with that bizarre statement, it was a moment before father and daughter broke eye contact to look at him. He hopped up the last few steps to the third level of the garden, hands framing the scene in front of him.

"This juxtaposition of beauty and tyranny—not that I think your brother's company are tyrants or anything, this is purely hypothetical aesthetics—if I could move the two of them a little closer together, the composition would be perfect for a truly stunning piece. I think I'd call it something like... 'Eden'. Or is that too snarky, what do you think?"

There was a brief silence.

"My dear," said Francesco at length, to Lucrezia. "Wherever did you find this boy? I think he might really be something."

There was no missing the difficulty that came in interpreting the tone Francesco used, and that in itself was somewhat threatening, but Leo put a big grin on for show, and though Lucrezia still looked frightened out of her wits she looked less so than before.

She even cracked a smile, when coming up to the huge veranda another wind pushed a flurry of pink cherry-blossom petals from the unusually large tree on the level below onto the head and shoulders of the nearest guard and Leo tried unsuccessfully to hold in his laughter at the sight. The guard didn't react to his ungainly snort, nor to the petals, so he must have been quite the professional.

Inside the mansion there was a shock of white that was so overpowering it was almost like they'd walked into an abandoned hospital. Two houseplants in either front corner of the entrance hall, a small Persian rug at the foot of the stairs, a large painting between the two doors on the left wall with the kind of ultra-modern splatter Leo despised—they only served to exaggerate the empty feeling of the place. Francesco urged them to leave their luggage in the hall way and showed them through the door at the back that lead into a massive (equally white and empty) dining room, and from there through another door at the back of that room.

They found Amelia alive and well and in the kitchen, fortunately not being made into a stew. It was a massive space, of course, the whole of the open-plan ground floor of Leo's apartment could have been tucked within it, but the checker-board black and white tiles on the floor and around the sides seemed ridiculously faux-homey for such an unwelcoming house.

And yet, seeing Lucrezia's sister in the flesh for the first time, smiling even before they came in with her legs swinging back and forth as she sat on the counter by one of the hob sets almost added a sense of hominess back into the space.

"Lucrezia!"

Her eyes lit up when they came in. The woman in the rather old-fashioned domestic's uniform standing next to her and moving something around a hissing frying pan looked up and paused, lowering the heat on the hob while Amelia slid off the counter and ran up to them.

Lucrezia met her halfway, arms wrapping around her tightly like she'd been pulled out of a burning building.

"Thank god," she murmured. They rocked back and forth a few times, and when Amelia pulled away it was clear Lucrezia was reluctant to let her go.

" 'Thank god'?" Amelia repeated—like her sister her voice spoke of a rather global childhood, but the freshman year at Edinburgh seemed to have put a distinctly Scottish tint into the mix. "What, did you think I might fall off the mountain and die on my way up? Thanks for the vote of confidence!"

With a sigh, Lucrezia stepped aside so Leo could step forward—he could tell she wasn't going to address her fears to Amelia here and now and agreed with her on that; it would have been a jarring thing to do as soon as they'd come in through the door.

"I was rooting for you, Amelia," he declared.

Amelia gasped, and her golden curls bounced with the little jump she made in excitement; hands sparkling with clear, glittery nail polish brought up to her mouth.

"Leonardo!" she squealed, then plastered her hands harder against her face with a mortified look. "Oh my god, my voice sounded so weird just then—how embarrassing!"

"Don't worry," he told her, arms spread for an embrace. "We'll keep a running score of who embarrasses themselves the most while we're here, and whoever wins will get a free ice cream at the end of it."

Giggling, the girl accepted his embrace with enthusiasm, while Lucrezia rolled her eyes to the side of them.

"It's so good to finally meet you in person; I've been looking forward to this for ages!"

"Me too," he said softly.

It was true. Up until not too long ago really he'd thought there was a possibility he might become legal family with the girl in his arms—and with his fractious relationship with his father the only blood-family he'd known for most of his life, that was something he knew he could get rather tender about.

A quick glance over at Francesco saw him with what Leo was beginning to tell was an excellent everyday mask of good cheer over something that remained inscrutable when he looked at them. He let go of Amelia forthwith, and she playfully struck herself on top of her head next to her faux-magnolia hairclip.

"Silly me," she said, reached out for her sister and turned her slightly, back towards the stove. "This is Zita—Signora Marconi moved out to Sicily to be with her family, so Uncle Alessandro brought Zita in to replace her."

The woman who had been cooking on the stove—beautiful, dark-skinned; her long, raven hair up in a bun—made a slight curtsey of the kind someone of Leo's station had never had aimed at him before, and it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"Madames et monsieurs," she greeted them, her soft black eyes downcast.

"Ah, now that is a shame," said Francesco. "Not that you're here of course, my dear, I'm sure you're perfectly wonderful, but I hadn't heard about Signora Marconi. You know, girls, her mother was the only one who could make tiramisu the way your Nana ate it? Never had it in the house after she died—such a shame. Tell me, which of the many corners of the world that have suffered my brother's presence did he pull you from? The Congo? The Sudan?"

"Somalia."

Rather than the clearly intimidated woman in front of them, the answer came from behind them, and in the same voice the question had been asked in only without the hoarseness. All four of them turned around to find the literal DNA copy of Francesco standing in the doorway; in a white suit to contrast his brother's navy.

Alessandro was larger than Francesco around the middle, and as Lucrezia had said before he had no beard, but the feeling in his eyes was different too. With only a glance Leo could tell it; though the man before them seemed to be able to pull his lips into a smile fairly enough, there was no mask over the hostility in his eyes—like one of those deep-sea angler fish with the needle-sharp teeth that came out of the darkness in search of prey.

Lucrezia did more than flinch at his abrupt entrance, taking a clear step away from him and straightening up like a board.

"Somalia?" replied Francesco, with interest. "I didn't realise you'd done business that far east. Well, not and that far south at the same time, at any rate."

"Oh, did I forget to mention it in this year's Christmas card, brother?" asked Alessandro.

Now, _his_ voice was almost brazenly hostile—covered up with joviality like a man wearing one of those novelty fake moustache, rubber nose and glasses, so that the disguise served more to mock the idea of wearing a disguise than to actually disguise his feeling.

He scanned the room, fixing his gaze on Leo for a moment and tilting his head curiously, but it was the woman—Zita, that he spoke to.

"You're needed upstairs," he said shortly.

Zita's eyes widened in concern for something or other; she turned the heat off every running hob and hurried to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. Alessandro didn't spare her a single glance, nor did she seem to see anything around her when she set to whatever the task was that he'd given her.

Amelia watched curiously, like she wanted to ask what was happening but didn't know what words to use, while Leo had the feeling a question from him would be too intrusive at this stage and Lucrezia was clearly having to try her hardest not to bolt from the room, or possibly not to bolt for the nearest frying pan and start beating her uncle over the head with it; she seemed conflicted in that way.

Francesco just didn't ask. Rather, he didn't ask directly, but he must have had some sort of inkling nonetheless.

"And where is my dear nephew?" was what he did ask. "I wanted to introduce you both to Leonardo da Vinci—Lucrezia's partner." He gestured towards him.

"Partner?" repeated Alessandro, and with immediate suspicion. "I didn't realise you'd been engaged, child."

Child? Lucrezia would be _thirty_ in a few years.

"We're not quite at that stage yet, Uncle Alessandro," Lucrezia managed to choke out.

The younger twin's eyes narrowed, disapproval so strong it was almost disgust plain for all to see on his face.

"Oh?" he said.

Leo felt compelled to fully block his former lover from his gaze, shifting himself between them. But Francesco only snorted.

"You must forgive my brother, Leonardo," he said. "I may have lapsed, but he's still stubbornly RCC, and very traditional about it too. Still, you might fare better with Girolamo—don't tell me he's not here? That would be a turn up for the ages, unless your plan was for me to die from shock."

It was almost bewildering to remember the ridiculous rules in the grandmother's will that had forced them all into this position. Leo spent the next half-second hoping fervently that Lucrezia's cousin had indeed decided not to show up, and gone to live in Antarctica with penguins instead.

Alessandro couldn't hide a smirk at the thought of his brother dying of shock, but he told them, "Girolamo has been extremely ill recently—he's staying upstairs where Zita can keep an eye on him. She's an accredited nurse, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask all of you to stay away from the top floor for the duration of the visit."

Immediately, Leo saw there was something... tight, about the man's eyes when he said the word 'ill'. It rang alarm bells in his head.

"Is he going to be all right?" asked Amelia, obviously and rather adorably sincere in her worry.

"Fine, fine," said Alessandro, waving his hand. "One of the dangers of the job, that's all. You know how it is in some of these disease-ridden primitive hell-holes we get called into."

"Well, I do hope the poor boy will be well enough to attend mother's birthday dinner tomorrow—as stipulated in the terms of the will," said Francesco, in a mostly teasing manner.

His twin seemed to take it as a threat though. Even the paper-thin veil of amiability he'd had on vanished like a bursting bubble at the remark, and Leo was unnerved to see a twitch in Francesco that spoke of one who thought he might have mis-stepped there.

"He'll be there if I have to wheel him in on a hospital bed," growled Alessandro. "I've already been over it with that blood-sucking lawyer; he doesn't have to be conscious at the dinner as long as he's present!"

There was a dead silence. It made the sudden pounding of Leo's heart all the louder in his ears.

A normal man might have asked why, if Alessandro's son's illness was so debilitating, he wasn't in a fucking _hospital_ instead of stuck on a mountain in the middle of nowhere for the sake of an inheritance he didn't actually need, and couldn't inherit if he _died_ due to lack of adequate medical care.

But Leo was beginning to get the measure of these twins now; from what Lucrezia had implied about them and what they had implied to him, or in the younger one's case just shown him outright.

These weren't men a 'normal' response was going to cut it with.

And then, four storeys above their heads, Leo was quite certain they all heard a distinct and distant scream of a man in pain.

"Well, shall we all prepare for an early dinner then?" asked Alessandro, before anyone else could comment on it. "Fortunately for us, women still know how to cook in Zita's corner of the world."

He turned and walked back into the dining room forthwith. Francesco followed with a shrug.

"I'm sure we'll all be stuffed by the end of the evening," he said—and with a casual look back asked, "Coming, children?"

Not pausing to see if they'd reply though, the door swung half-shut between them, blocking both twins from view—and whatever Lucrezia might have said about her desire to keep Amelia in the dark about their twisted family, the frightened confusion on the girl's face spoke of one who had at least an inkling as to what was happening in the house.

She was the first to break the silence, if only with a single word.

"Lucrezia?" she whispered, and reached for her sister's hand. Lucrezia took it and rubbed it comfortingly, which prompted Leo to put his own arm around the girl's shoulders.

That scared voice and the fight that was in Lucrezia's eyes to chase off her own despair—that decided it for him.

He wasn't just going to see her and her sister safely through this nightmare.

He was going to make sure it was the last such nightmare they ever had to go through.

He'd have loved to see those twins just _try_ to stop him.

 

*~*~*


	2. Gothic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last episode aired yesterday in my country, but I'm saving it for new year's. Woe is me! WOE IS ME!
> 
> Anyway, in this chapter the Agatha Christie (and other) references continue, and I remind all the kids watching at home that if you ever face the situations Leo does in this fic... DON'T DO WHAT HE DOES! These are matters that should be left to professionals, unless like Leo your ex-girlfriend's uncle has bribed/threatened all the professionals, in which case I guess you're on your own.
> 
> Hope the chapter is enjoyable. Until next time! :)

 

*~*~*

 

 

Fortunately, Thing One and Thing Two had much more important barely-veiled threats to deliver to each other after dinner than they required the presence of Leo and the girls; so they were left to their own devices, and Leo had the chance to make a phone call.

"Leo, please tell me you're having me on," Zo begged from his hotel room down the mountain. Leo envisioned him lying horizontally across a bed with white sheets and a black-iron frame, head hanging upside-down off one side with one hand holding the phone to his ear and the other slapped against his forehead.

It wasn't like he could lie to him about something so important though.

"Armed guards—four of them at least, and I wouldn't have put it past Uncle Alessandro to have given them orders to shoot on sight, so I'd take the opportunity to enjoy the delights of the town for the duration of our trip, if I were you."

The realisation that Zo might have actually been in mortal danger if he'd decided to come up to the house for a chat—and knowing how Zo worried about the both of them, he would have—had come shamefully late to Leo during the dinner and he'd wasted no time in having Lucrezia point him to a phone when they were done. Landline only, of course; nothing else worked that Leo had immediate access to.

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Zo, a sigh crackling over the line. "That might save me, Leo, but what's to stop a stray bullet going through _your_ supposedly top-class brain with nothing more than a 'oops—thought he was a burglar' from one of those wankers to let them off the hook for it?"

Admittedly, Leo hadn't thought of that. But he couldn't bring himself to believe that such an ignominious fate awaited him and just clicked his tongue, rolling his eyes despite no one being able to see him.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "They know who my father is; they know he'll sue them for every penny they have if enough hairs on my head are harmed—via bullet or any other method."

"Ooh; I'm sure they're shaking in their shoes. Would you rather I continue research into Crossgate, Rovere Industries, or just start composing your epitaph here and now?"

"Crossgate, please," said Leo. "I'm beginning to get the measure of the twins, but I need to know more about the cousin."

Not a peep had been heard from Girolamo Riario throughout dinner; and though the woman—Zita, had reappeared towards the end to replace the armed guard who up 'til that point had been serving them, she hadn't said a word about it. Not even when asked directly by Francesco about the nature of his nephew's illness—only looking to Alessandro for direction and keeping her mouth shut when he'd dismissed the question.

Leo had been able to glean that this 'Riario' (and why, he wondered, did both sets of children have different surnames to the twins?) not only worked for his father's firm, but participated directly in the combat situations they engaged in.

"Tight-lipped, was he?" Zo asked.

"I suppose you could say that," Leo replied, "as I'm pretty sure he was sedated to stop him from screaming."

"... what?"

"I haven't actually seen him yet. His dad says he's gravely ill and being looked after upstairs by a nurse—who gave me the impression she was pretty much being held hostage, she looked so terrified—and we heard him screaming just before dinner."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"Zo?"

"... Jesus fucking Christ." Leo envisioned his friend had sat up in shock and was now perched on the side of the bed with his mouth hanging open. Then his tone suddenly changed. "Although I suppose if I was him I might feel sick too; if some of the stuff I've managed to find out about fucking Crossgate is true."

"A hive of scum and villainy?" asked Leo.

"A hive of racist murdering sociopaths, more like. Though no one's been able to prove anything, of course—couldn't see the evidence over the massive piles of _money_ in the way."

Of course.

Zo continued, "The only one that's made it into print is a massacre that happened almost two years ago in the Sudan, whole village wiped out just like that; but there have been isolated incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan as well that you can find if you go deep enough online."

It wasn't like Leo hadn't been expecting this as soon as he'd heard the phrase 'private security firm'. He may have had his head up in a stellar nursery half the time, but he did have some inkling of the general reputation of such... businesses.

That this information could only be found in online articles, not in print, spoke much to the reach of Alessandro's authority.

"Was Riario implicated in any of this?" he asked.

"In the massacre, yes," said Zo, "and I've no doubt he's had a hand in covering up the other rapes and murders his employees have been accused of; seems like a swell guy. Really hope he gets better soon."

Sarcasm aside, Leo would have preferred it if Riario _had_ been feeling better, if only because Lucrezia assured him the hostility between the twins was worse than she'd ever seen it at dinner, and he had a feeling that was because Alessandro was feeling threatened in being so outnumbered. That was probably why he'd brought the guards too, come to think of it; stories about death threats be damned.

At any rate it had meant the first meal Leo had shared with Amelia; something he'd been looking forward to for months, was spent with her in near-petrified confusion, all but silent for the duration of the meal.

That had really pissed him off.

"What about his personal life?" he asked, rubbing his furrowed brow. "Does he have... I don't know, a Facebook page?"

"Not that I've been able to find, no. Matter of fact, if Lucrezia hadn't confirmed he did exist I might have thought he was someone his dad made up to have a scapegoat for all the shit he's pulled in the middle east, just in case any of that ever did end up hitting the fan."

Interesting. And congruous with Lucrezia's characterisation of the man as just an extension of his father.

"Well, I trust you to glean everything there is to be gleaned from the information superhighway. After we're done, we might have to do something a little more on-site."

"Assuming you survive?"

"Stop worrying," Leo ordered, rolling his eyes again. "I'm perfectly safe up here. On a mountain. With a pair of murderous twins with armed guards at their disposal."

The words came out as if another part of himself was reminding him of the reality of the situation, but he couldn't bring himself to feel overly nervous about it; not when such a tempting prize—the freedom of his loved ones—lay at stake, and not when things were turning out to be so _interesting_.

"Yeah, what could be safer than that?"

"The point is, don't come up to the mountain. Otherwise there'll be no one around to post bail next time I need it."

"Fuck if I have the money for bail after blowing off Sing's payroll. Told me I could forget about the holiday pay I'd had coming too, the miserable old cu—"

"And on that note, Zo, I have two troubled young women I was tasked with looking after who I really need to get back to as soon as possible now I've done all I can to not get you killed. Glad we had this talk."

Zo snorted. "Yeah, it was the high point of my year." And Leo was just about to hang up when he added—"Listen, Leo..."

Such a suddenly uncertain pause somehow let Leo know exactly which lines the next words out of his best friend's mouth were going to travel along. His heart seized momentarily; but he did no more than wait for Zo to finish.

"... can you tell Luce... tell Lucrezia, I mean. Um... you tell her to hang in there, all right?"

Despite himself, Leo smiled. "Yeah, all right."

"And you do the same. And be careful too, for fuck's sake; god knows how many people are going to queue up to revive you so they can kill you themselves if anything happens to you; it'll be a stampede, and I'll be at the head of it."

"Well, we definitely wouldn't want that. Take care, I'll ring you again tomorrow around midday."

"Until then."

Leo forced himself to hang up first to avoid the usual endless goodbye, and took a deep breath.

He wouldn't have said he was absolutely certain of Zo's safety after that. For all his whingeing it would have been far from out of character for the man to turn up hiding in the giant cherry blossom tree the next morning trying to keep an eye on them, shaking more petals down onto the heads of the guards and trying to keep from laughing at them loudly enough that they'd notice and shoot him.

Hopefully Thing Two was keeping enough medical supplies in the house for the sake of his son that any bullets that did end up flying wouldn't have been the end of it. Leo may not have had a medical PhD, strictly speaking, but he understood the theory well enough, he felt.

That was his current theory regarding Riario, actually—that he was not 'ill' as his father had stated in those very vaguest of terms, but rather had been injured on some possibly illegal op-gone-wrong that Alessandro was trying to keep under wraps. Leo definitely didn't believe the surface tale that Alessandro had spun; the man was clearly not the best of liars, relying instead on his cursory excuses to be backed up by money and influence in place of truth. But again, that was only a theory.

The other possibility, so far as Leo could see, was that he was unharmed and being held here against his will, in which case they may even have had a possible unlooked for ally in this venture.

After all, much as the evidence he had portrayed the man as his father's shadow-puppet, what Zo had dug up online had been far from conclusive, and Lucrezia never saw or spoke to her cousin outside these little gatherings. Add that to the fact that Alessandro was hardly the type to inspire respect through anything other than fear, and how would any of them have known if Riario had somehow found the courage to stand up to him during the last two years?

Still, he considered the first explanation to be the more likely. And it was making him... antsy, for a reason he was finding difficult to put his finger on.

"Did you manage to get a hold of him?"

One of the few well-furnished rooms in the mansion, the library—with a far more traditional feel and wooden floorboards that Leo guessed meant it was far older than most of the house—was where he and the girls had found themselves after dinner. Leo had quietly asked Lucrezia if there was somewhere they could all talk. And he'd made sure to emphasise 'all' because, young as she was, Amelia was an adult now and it had only taken some gentle coaxing to get Lucrezia to realise it was time to stop trying to protect her by keeping her in the dark.

Darkness was a fickle protector at best; for all he could see Lucrezia was still reluctant. Although, Alessandro himself might as well have started jabbing a spotlight into Amelia's face for all the barely-veiled threats of grievous bodily harm he'd made at dinner.

The two sisters sat next to each other on a mahogany settee with inset violet velvet-lined cushions; Lucrezia's arms around a confused and anxious-looking Amelia's hunched shoulders. Lucrezia's eyes looked uncomfortably wide, wrenched open with worry when she asked her question.

"Yeah," he said, closing the door behind him. "He's fine. And he knows about the guards now so I suppose we'll have to trust him to be sensible—god help us."

Lucrezia breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god."

Ah, there it was. That little spark of fondness that relaxed the tension around those eyes a touch. Well, let it never be said that Leonardo da Vinci was a petty man.

"He sends his love, anyway. Zo-style."

She smiled, glancing away a little. There was something of a long silence before Leo plonked himself down opposite the girls on a velvet-lined pouffe and leant forward on his knees. With a slow exhale he began.

"Well. I can see why you didn't want to come alone."

"I honestly haven't seen it this bad since I was a little kid," Lucrezia told him. "And I don't even know if I only think that because it seemed scarier when I was a kid."

Amelia pulled away just a little so she could frown at her sister. "What, Uncle Alessandro outright threatened to _kill Dad_ in front of you when you were little?!" she exclaimed—but in a near-whisper, as though she were afraid someone might be listening.

"In a word, yes," Lucrezia admitted. "I hadn't noticed it before, but I think Girolamo has actually been calming him down all these years. I wouldn't have thought he or anyone else would've meant that much to him."

"I was telling Zo I thought your uncle might be feeling outnumbered." Leo frowned. "You say your cousin is usually keeping your uncle calm though, rather than encouraging him?"

The brow above those beautiful eyes furrowed. "He must have been, since the bastard's gone so far off the rails with him ill. Why do you ask?"

Leo glanced up at the ceiling. He had no way of knowing where on the top floor Riario was, nor any real evidence to back up that second theory that he might have rebelled against his father somehow, but... he didn't know; maybe it was one of those unreliable 'instincts' that defied his personal philosophy with their bare irrationality.

"Just wondering if we might not be able to tempt him to our side—if he wants an end to this as much as anyone—"

"Leo, I imagine he does," Lucrezia cut him off sharply, "but I've said it before: he'd never turn against his father, not in a million years—the man's claws are sunk that far into him."

Again, Amelia started.

"What?" she said. "But I've always thought Girolamo was really nice... at least, he always has been to me, anyway, and he's just struck me as... you know," she shrugged. "A really nice person."

That was interesting. Lucrezia might have groaned and put her head in her hands just then, but Leo was intrigued by Amelia's estimation, again because of that stupid instinct that had to have picked up on something he didn't from Alessandro, or maybe from—

Maybe from...

Wait, that was it! At dinner, when Zita had reappeared to serve them towards the end, beyond the tension, fear, the clear impression Leonardo had had from her that she was trapped somehow, and how there was obviously hatred beneath her fear when it came to the old man: beyond that there was something else.

It had been a moment, right when she'd appeared at his side to clear his plate away, a moment when she'd lingered as if expecting some other order or question. And when none had come, there'd been a sharp narrowing of her eyes; a flash of anger. Hadn't she returned to the kitchen with some indignation in her step?

His instinct told him she'd been pissed the man hadn't spared a single moment to ask after his son's condition.

His instinct told him she cared about the man upstairs, and if it were true then it would have been more telling from her than coming from Amelia.

If it were true. Leo had nothing but instinct from a few short phrases spoken in her body language to believe so. Well, nothing so far anyway. There were a surplus of easy-access climbing points outside and he was looking forward more than ever to using them to try and find Riario, as his instincts urged.

It was hard to properly provide for all the possible outcomes of the twins' real-life chess match without all the pieces before him on the board.

"Amelia..." Lucrezia sighed, turning away from her hands to look her sister in the eye. "Girolamo is a master manipulator; he knows how to make people let their guard down. Just like Dad, really, which I suppose is where he gets it from." She shook her head a little.

"Dad?" Amelia echoed. "What's Dad done?"

This might have been one of those occasions Leo could have stepped in to change the subject and make things easier for Lucrezia, only he was just as eager to hear her answer, and said nothing. But Amelia cut into the long pause her sister gave her before she did.

"You don't think he started that fire, like Uncle Alessandro always accused him of?"

Fire? Nothing along those lines had been mentioned at dinner.

"No, no," Lucrezia's eyes twitched as if whatever memory this brought up had been a physical strike against her—subtle, but Leo never missed these things. "No, he wasn't the one who started the fire, although that also..."

Leo cleared his throat.

"Fire?" he inquired.

There was a pleading look in Lucrezia's eyes that begged him not to go any further into that than he had, even as Amelia said rather lightly, "Mm, it was what—ten years ago? Something like that anyway, and Dad and I were way down at the bottom of the garden and you came running down the steps crying and saying that the conservatory was on fire. Half the room burned up and we ended up knocking it down to put up the greenhouse, but the investigation said it was an electrical fault— _three_ investigators in the end, wasn't it?"

"Something like that," Lucrezia agreed, though weakly, and there was something in that account Leo didn't like. "Didn't stop Alessandro from accusing Dad of trying to kill him, even though he was nowhere near it at the time." She sighed again. "I don't think it's important, but... even so. Amelia, you know our father isn't... isn't what he seems, I mean."

To Leo's surprise, but not entirely, Amelia actually looked less confused after Lucrezia finished her sentence.

"Why?" she asked, as one who had expected to ask this question someday. "What's he done?"

Lucrezia looked momentarily lost by this lack of shock on her sister's part, but then stumbled her way through a slightly more detailed account of what she'd told Leo and Zo on the bus; about Francesco selling military vehicle parts to Alessandro through a shell corporation and laughing at his twin not realising he was giving money to his nemesis.

Laughing, as those parts ran the vehicles that brought death to god knew how many civilians in east Africa in the months following their construction. Profiting from that, deliberately, and for a joke. Baiting a sociopath who probably had countless bodies laid at his feet.

Exact genetic copies—and so often people who could be so different could also be so much the same, even outside their physical similarities.

And Leo heard the guilt in Lucrezia's voice again when she told this tale, as his eyes moved away from the scene that suddenly seemed too intimate to him, that made him feel like a stranger in someone else's family.

He glanced over the tall varnished shelves and their old books. If any of the volumes that filled the room had been bound since Leo had been born they had been done so that they should have looked otherwise. Leather and block-colour textile rather than bright photo-finished masse card. Gilt titles instead of embossed faux-metal in standard fonts. Like books on the set of a movie rather than someone's actual house.

The guilt that echoed off those tomes came from someone who felt responsible for not finding some way out of her and her loved ones' ending up in this room. Leo could tell; he liked to think he knew Lucrezia that well.

Or perhaps he knew her too well, and hadn't given up enough of himself in return. That had been the problem, hadn't it?

"I thought it might have been something like that," said Amelia glumly, breaking Leo out of that little morose detour his thoughts had decided to pull him down. "You know I said my friend in the Mathematics Department; Sophia—that we were getting into the Fair Trade association and things like that? It made me want to look up what I could about Dad's company and do some digging." She shrugged. "I didn't think I could ever bring it up with him, but some of the working conditions in his overseas plants, and the hostile takeovers..." she shook her head.

Leo noticed a look on Lucrezia's face that suggested she'd never thought of doing that herself; but he didn't blame her for that, her attention had always been focussed on Amelia's safety first and foremost, so much that she hadn't even let Leo know of her sister's existence until she'd trusted him—and that had been after the business that had got Lorenzo into trouble.

"Did you think that... maybe next time we shouldn't come back here?" Amelia asked. "Just let Girolamo have the money? I mean, the worst Dad can do is disown us, and it's not like we can't get jobs and stuff."

Lucrezia was silent. This seemed to make Amelia more confused again; like she had expected a more positive reaction, yet Leo understood. This whole thing had been overwhelming for Lucrezia, and even if she might have been having trouble processing it, he knew she was smart enough to realise the problems with that.

"Lu-Lu?"

"Two problems with that—at least two that stand out immediately," Leo announced, snapping Lucrezia out of her daze and putting both sets of blue-green eyes on him. "Firstly that giving the money to your cousin, as far as I can make out, basically means giving it to Crossgate—and I don't know how much money we're talking about here, but I wouldn't trust them not to ruin half a dozen lives with a fiver, let alone a large sum."

The girls exchanged a glance of agreement, and Leo hesitated because it was difficult to voice the other matter.

"Secondly, I think your sister's worried that your father might very well do more than just disown you. It probably wouldn't be anything overt, but I've no doubt it would be devastating."

"But he doesn't even need that money!"

"It's not about the money though, is it? Not for either of them. It's about getting one over the other—bigger than they've ever done it before, I'd wager, and whoever loses is going to be so pissed..."

He let that thought speak for itself.

"Then what can we do?" Lucrezia asked. "I don't want to have to live 'off the grid' or anything ridiculous like that—I certainly don't want Amelia to have to live like that; the twins could easily live another twenty years apiece!"

That was the long and short of it. And that left two options.

"Well, assuming you don't want to speed the whole thing up by bumping one of them off—"

"For fuck's sake, Leo, can you treat this seriously!?"

"I am," he said, and regretted it when he saw the look in her eyes the moment she thought he had actually suggested murder in all seriousness. "There's two ways the whole will-saga ends—when one of the twins dies, or when one of the three of you doesn't show up to the birthday. Now, we don't want to take the chance they'll both live to see a hundred, and we don't want to risk reprisals by forcing one of them to lose their game." He paused and added, "And we're not going to kill anyone either, don't be ridiculous."

Relief and irritation warred in his ex-lover's expression. He probably could have put that more politely, though she only answered—

"So?" as exasperated as anyone ever got when listening to him explain his plans.

"So," he said, "we make sure neither of them 'lose' by making sure neither of them 'win'. Which means all three of you have to turn your backs on this place in two years time."

For a moment, Lucrezia only stared, and Amelia turned towards her somewhat hopefully. Then her lovely eyes closed, with the same exasperation as before.

"Leo," she said, through gritted teeth. "I've already told you. My cousin would never go for it."

Leo only grinned like the complete prat he knew he was.

"Oh, but Lucrezia, he hasn't met _me_ yet! I've exiled 'never' to the vast wastelands of the unimaginative in tougher scrapes than this!"

Thus he waved his hands, made Amelia laugh and Lucrezia snort despite herself, and had no idea what he was getting himself into.

 

*~*~*

 

That night was as cloudless as the day had been—a hundred million stars dusted the sky outside Leonardo's window, and the cool breeze that encircled even the lower level of the mountain refreshed him amidst the oppressive atmosphere of the house.

Below his room was Lucrezia and Amelia's. They were sharing; they had insisted on it, and though Leo obviously couldn't join them after a certain hour (Francesco may have been lapsed in his Catholicism, but some things even psychopathic fathers wouldn't allow), it was the right move to make.

After all, he wouldn't have wanted either one of them to be woken by his movements and possibly try to stop him. That might have alerted the guards; of which he was now sure there were four on site. Not ideal, but given the size of the house they'd be easy enough to evade.

Girolamo Riario was, according to his father, two floors above him—though Leo wouldn't have known which room on that floor held him.

It went without saying that he was eager to find out.

And he was just about to make his way out onto the balcony when a door on the floor above slammed shut hard enough to shake his room too.

BANG.

There was a flurry of footsteps above his head. Leo's hand hesitated with the three central fingers just touching the wrought handle of the glass doors, and he looked back to the main door that lead out to the corridor. A barely audible snatch of furious conversation between two voices he didn't recognise managed to reach him through the walls, and thinking quickly he turned the bedside lamp on and opened the book he'd brought for the flight to a random page.

Sure enough, it was less than a minute before there was a harsh knock on his door. He was cautious when he put the book down and went to answer it, and as he had expected, one of the armed guards was waiting for him on the other side.

Leo grinned cheerfully for him. "Can I help you?"

The man before him was taller and broader than him, long-faced and long-nosed with a dark-bristled scalp. He showed next to no emotion when he answered, and the one cold feeling in his gaze could only be deemed 'suspicion'.

"Have you left your room recently?" he asked. His accent was Germanic, though Leo couldn't pin it down with a single short sentence.

Instead, he pretended to think about his answer. "Uh, no. No, I can't say that I have—"

Immediately, the guard cut him off. "Has anyone tried to come into your room, or been by here?"

"What, recently? I can't say that they have. Is there something wrong—"

Without another word the guard turned and left. Leo stood there for a second, blinking, so many possibilities as to what might have been going on running through his head that even he struggled to follow them all to a logical conclusion as the guard swiftly turned the corner and disappeared.

His first thought was that, despite his earlier misgivings, someone after Alessandro's life really had come up to the mansion to see if they could bump him off when he was vulnerable, but that and the idea that Alessandro had—irrationally or otherwise—decided that Francesco might be the one after him were discarded for the same reason.

Alessandro would have had every reason to suspect Leo of being in league with Francesco, after all, and no reason not to suspect him being in league with any of his other enemies. Why then, would the guard who'd just disturbed him, who seemed capable enough, not have shoved his way into Leo's room to search for whatever he might have been looking for?

No. He'd assumed that Leo would have no reason not to tell him the truth about receiving or not receiving whoever he was looking for.

This line of thought was cut off when he remembered that the girls might have somehow been in danger, and in order to relieve himself of this fear and test his earlier hypothesis at once he was going to have to get down to their room.

Simple enough. He left the lamp on with the book haphazardly splayed open face-down on the pillow—Andrea would have wagged his finger at him for it, and for everything else he was doing, but then that was why Leo had told him he was spending the week in Florence—and crossed back to the doors to the balcony. A quick glance around the outside let him know he wasn't being watched

The balconies around the mansion were as stark white as the interiors; and fitted with railings whose bars were simple enough that it gave the building the unfortunate impression of barred windows to keep its inmates safely contained. However, this also made them easy to hold onto, as Leo flipped himself over the edge and swung down onto the balcony below.

Luck meant he made little sound, despite his landing being less than graceful, and he held a groan of pain in when he overbalanced onto one knee. In his head, the unbidden memory of the last time he'd done something like this, and Zo had been climbing up the wall behind him humming to the Ninja Turtles theme: _'fucking moron ninja artist, fucking moron ninja artist, fucking moron ninja artist; wanker with a death-wish, what a cunt!_ ' taunted him.

Stupid Zo. Gritting his teeth and climbing to his feet, Leo rapped on the balcony door as harshly as he dared. Within, he heard a frightened whisper he couldn't make out, and then Lucrezia's voice—

"Bloody hell—it's only Leonardo!"

Before a shadowy figure stepped out into the moonlight and opened the doors. Lucrezia looked tired, and annoyed that he'd clearly scared the both of them—not his intention, so he asked before she could voice her thoughts:

"Everything all right?"

She glanced over to Amelia, who he could just about see sitting up in her own bed; probably both woken by the commotion within if either of them had even been asleep.

"As far as I know," she said. "Why, what's going on in there?"

Before Leo could say anything there was a rough knocking at the other door that had Amelia gasp and scrunch up in her bed. Leo ducked behind the wall further along the balcony so he wouldn't be seen and Lucrezia quietly closed the balcony doors to return to the main and answer it.

"Yes?"

"Sorry to disturb you, miss," said the guard—a different one to before by the sound of it. "Have you left your room in the last hour?"

It had been two since Leo and the girls had retired; he'd wanted to wait until midnight for this escapade.

"What? No, my sister and I went straight to bed. What's happening, there have been all these noises—"

"Nothing for you to worry about, miss. No one has tried to come by since you came up to bed?"

"No; what's going on?"

"Just a routine security check, miss. Goodnight."

Leo waited until he heard the door close again to slide back into view of the room, and Lucrezia was quick to let him in and herd him over to the bed.

"Get inside," she hissed at him. "God knows what those awful people would do if they saw you hanging around on my balcony—some of their bullets might hit my sister."

With a snort, Leo leant against the wall. "Don't worry, they're all still in the house. I got a similar visit from your uncle's crack squad just before I came down after I heard raised voices on the floor above; thought I'd better come down."

"What were the voices saying?"

"Couldn't make it out. But they didn't search either of our rooms, so whatever they're looking for they trust us not to be a party to it, and since I doubt your uncle is bursting with trust I think what's happened is that someone's lost your cousin."

He could still see the light reflected in Lucrezia's eyes as it narrowed in response to his words.

"Lost?" she repeated.

"Wandered off in a delirious fever, maybe?" Leo shrugged. "It's the only explanation I can think of right now. Do you know where he'd go?"

"Where he'd go? No. No, I have no idea; most of the rooms not on the ground floor are locked anyway. What are you—?"

Leo was already moving towards the door to the corridor. He opened it silently, glancing in both directions before turning back to Lucrezia.

"I'm going to try and find him before they do. Sleep tight!"

"Leo!"

He squeezed through the doorway he'd opened up as little as possible in case the door creaked and—in soft shoes brought specially for the occasions, as they'd served him well in a surprising variety of circumstances in the past—crept along the long red carpet that softened the floor beneath. Lucrezia did not follow him, probably because she still had a scrap of sense left, unlike her ex-boyfriend.

The bright white interiors were silver in the darkness—the guards hadn't turned the lights on, which seemed a little counter-productive when you were trying to locate someone. They probably had their reasons.

And then, as he turned the first corner towards the staircase, he heard the voices, coming from the floor above; one male, one female, and the latter of those he recognised was Zita.

A swift crossing to hide beneath the stairs put him in prime position to hear the words this time.

"—to find a way off the mountain!"

"Don't be ridiculous, he can't get that far in his condition."

"He could get further than we could get him back from if he gets too close to a ledge! There's more than one sheer drop that could kill—"

"He won't get that far. Now go upstairs and get out of our way, you're the one who lost him in the first place, how little help are you going to be when it comes to retrieving him?"

There was a heavy pause.

"He needs to be in a hospital. He needs specialist help; people with training that I don't have to—"

"What, you think you're going to get anywhere by telling me this? If the man upstairs says 'no', you're not going to convince him to say 'yes' by appealing to Riario's well-being; even someone from a backwards shithole like yours has to understand that by now."

It was strange that it was right then Leo knew what had been making him so antsy about the whole Riario thing—the concern in Zita's voice and the callous dismissal from the guard making him realise that all he really, truly knew about Riario was that he was being kept in this house, in pain, when he really should have been somewhere else.

It was concern on a purely human level.

"Now get back upstairs," snapped the guard—Leo placed him somewhere in German-speaking Switzerland, if his knowledge of accents wasn't off. Slightly Americanised, probably from TV and films. "If the man Donati has in town decides to come up here after all, and Riario has left the house, they might come into contact with each other—"

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

"—You know Riario. Even in his state, I'd hate to see the fool's chances against him, and then we'd have to engineer another cover-up for similar idiots to read about in third-rate blogs. And it seems the boyfriend wasn't lying about his father being a lawyer."

Shit! Alessandro had the phones tapped—that was the only way they could have known that much about what was happening, shit!

"I'm going to send Laurence to check on the boyfriend again. Just in case they do have something to do with it. Do you know which room he's in?"

Repeating the word 'shit' over and over in his may not have been helping, but it certainly made Leo feel better to have something to do while he went over his options. Best chance he had was to climb up from the trellis running alongside the wall next to the first-floor patio and get onto the balconies that were close enough together that he could hop back to his room, but that would rely on the trellis being sturdy enough and left a few crucial seconds either side for him to get caught in.

Well, no time like the present.

Confident that the two speakers had moved away from the stairs rather than towards it, Leo dashed out towards the balcony and picked the lock with Zo's un-patented method within seconds.

Christ, he hoped Zo was going to stay away from the house like he'd told him too! Or if not, he hoped at least he'd miss meeting Riario, who that guard had implied would kill on sight... which sounded really fucked up now Leo didn't have time to think about it, but there you go.

At least the trellis seemed sturdy. It was a little difficult to see, painted as white as the house and with the climbing wisteria not reaching as high up as Leo would be using it, but the moon gave it a small shadow. He did break off two nails in his haste though, that smarted.

Heart in his throat, Leo gave a rare moment of thanks to his father for taking him to various athletic clubs in hopes that he would 'be more like other boys his age'. Team sports may not have turned out to be Leo's thing, but that rock-climbing lark had certainly come in use. What could he say for Piero though?—stopped clocks were still right twice a day.

He reached the balcony in fifteen seconds tops; just close enough to the corridor that was on the other side of the locked room it jutted out from to hear someone stomping along it. He practically leapt the two further balconies back to his own, where the light he'd left on still shone.

The knock on his door came just as he was clambering back onto it. He took a second to inhale, straighten his hair out somewhat, and exhale, then walked briskly to answer his visitor.

"Yes?"

The extra annoyance in his tone was, he felt, a particularly nice touch.

"Sorry, sir." It was the fourth and final guard before him, and he was English—west midlands area. "Just checking." He leant in and looked from side to side. "Any developments since my colleague last came 'round?"

"The Chinese physicists might have found a way to stop the doomsday cult from sending more information to the invading aliens," Leo told him.

He received a suitably blank look in return.

Leo nodded his head towards the book still sitting neatly on his bedspread. "It's a good story," he said. "Character development leaves something to be desired, but it's still well above average."

The guard was still blank. "Have you been out on the balcony, sir?"

A breeze from outside was slowly pushing the glass door back.

"Only opened it to let some air in," Leo said smoothly. "Rather warm night."

"No one else been by?"

"No, and I'm beginning to think this is more than just a routine security check."

Shrugging, the guard made a clearly evasive glance off to the side and said, "A double-check never hurts. Goodnight, sir."

"Goodnight."

Leo made sure the guard had disappeared right around the other end of the corridor before closing his door a breathing a sigh of relief, head resting against the wooden surface. He took a few moments to make himself calm again and looked back at the night sky through the open door. The moon's position had changed just a touch since his daring (useless) excursion to check on Lucrezia and Amelia.

At least they were safe. Zo too, if he didn't meet a feverish killer coming up the mountain when he should have been in bed in the town's little hotel. _'We'll have to have another cover-up'_ indeed, he guessed that put an end to wondering if those rumours had been...

Suddenly Leo found himself going very still, like a sixth sense within him realised there was something wrong about the room.

Like he was being watched.

There was no one else in the room or on the balcony. No obvious CCTV, but they'd tapped the phones so God knew what kind of hidden cameras were about the place. Or would that have meant they'd have found their missing patient by now? Depended on where the cameras were, if there were any.

Shit. What was he even doing? Time and again Andrea would tell him that leaping into trouble and improvising along the way was all very well and good until one's luck ran out—almost as much as he'd scold Leo for leaving books open face-down to hold his place; 'ruining the spine' he'd say, and Andrea was the sort of person—

Leo's eyes fell on the novel he'd recommended to the guard. He remembered leaving it in the spine-ruining position before he'd left.

It was closed now.

Carefully, one slow, slow step at a time, he approached the bed. He looked once to the door—most rooms above the ground floor locked, Lucrezia had said; only _his_ hadn't been—and then back to the bed.

_Deep breaths_ , he told himself. _Deep breaths_.

As his own heart slowed with enough will on his part he became more and more attuned to the room's stillness, and the tiny lacks thereof that spoke to him having been wrong about a certain earlier conclusion. The wardrobe set against the opposite wall had been thin and unsuitable for anyone to climb into. That only left one place.

A saner man than Leonardo da Vinci might have gone to fetch that guard back, before he knelt.

A saner man than Leonardo da Vinci was not in the room.

He knelt; slowly, slowly and carefully, eyes on both exits and then back on the bed as he leant down, got his balance, and reached for the covers that brushed the edges of the floor.

For a moment he was still. Then, gently, he pulled the covers back.

And there he was.

 

*~*~*

 

"Hello," Leo said, once his brain had rebooted. "Are you all right down there?"

The man curled up in the centre of the space beneath the bed was probably about the same age as Lucrezia; a little darker than her, with hair that Leo judged would be black even without the shadows falling on it. His eyes were like the old riddle—black, and white, and red all over, like he had been crying and then much worse than that; peering out at him curiously from beneath dark hoods.

Leo's initial appraisal of the man before him was halted when, after the eyes, the next thing he noticed was the straitjacket.

'Ill' the younger twin had said. Leo supposed it hadn't been a lie after all, even if it had been misleading.

Fuck.

"Everyone's looking for you, you know," more words just kept coming out of his mouth; absurdly casual-sounding. "I think they want to take you back upstairs."

The man's lips moved, just a little. Leo took the risk of leaning in closer.

"Do you know where you are?"

He couldn't hear anything yet, but the same words wrote themselves over and over on those moving lips. The eyes were erratic as well as inflamed, sometimes focusing on Leo, sometimes on nothing—drugged, perhaps?

"Do you know who you are?"

"... deceived."

Leo cocked his head.

"... shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived."

Deceived? Who or what did he think was trying to deceive him? Was he hallucinating? Or did he only think he might be? He was quiet, and yet he sounded so desperate...

"We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived."

"... Riario?" That wasn't the man's first name, but even if that was the one he might have responded better to, and even though it was the current year it was, it still seemed too informal for Leo to use it.

Anyway, the man only shuddered around the same words, like hearing his name had chilled him.

"We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived. We shall not be deceived."           

He was beginning to sound more frustrated too. Leo judged it wise to back off just a touch.

"Good mantra," he said, after a while. "You keep that up for a minute; I need to think."

And with that he put the bed covers back into their original position and stood up, casting his eyes around the room as if searching out for help.

Well.

That answered a few of his questions.

Fuck if his first impulse wasn't to go to Zo for advice. Not that he thought Zo was an expert in proper responses to finding insane people under your bed while on vacation in Italy, but he had that thing where he said things that made Leo suddenly understand things and it worked a lot better if Zo was there and not on the other end of a tapped phoneline.

That phone problem also crossed every single other person in... the world, off Leo's list of possible helpers, because he knew at least that he didn't want to alert Alessandro to his son's location just yet—especially not when he'd obviously been handling him so poorly, and god knew how responsible the man had been for his condition in the first place.

He supposed—but one dinner though he may have had with the man—it was all too likely anyone would have gone mad having Thing Two as their father; nature and nurture working against them.

On the other hand, it was just as possible Riario had had a single psychotic break and that this condition was temporary. Although that still left the fact that shoving him into the attic to waste away was an atmosphere less than conducive to recovery.

Leo knew a thing or two about psychology. More information was required.

But at the same time there was that terrible, frivolous idea that he could not stop from cascading into his head as he dropped back down to the floor and pulled the covers back again. And unfortunately, the frivolous was the only thing he could think to say.

"Victorian Gothic."

It had the effect of at least stopping the mantra, though Riario only blinked those wide dark eyes at him in confusion.

"That's what I'd call this, I mean; when I paint it later. Or maybe just 'Gothic'. It's very Jane Eyre, Woman-in-White, et cetera—actually, stay there, let me get my sketchbook."

He hopped up to retrieve it and the pencils from his bag, and Riario hadn't moved a millimetre when he got back.

"Do you have an appreciation for art?" Leo asked him, once he'd found a blank page. "Paintings, I mean. I dabble, you know—as an artist, when I'm not doing the work I'm paid for; which I could tell you about but you probably wouldn't understand it. Anyway, I'm asking because I'd like your opinion; tell me, what angle would you paint this whole... meeting from? Because with the bed in the way the options are rather limited, and I'm having difficulty envisioning it in my mind, which I have to say is really, really rare."

No answer, but Riario looked... interested, in what he had to say, which was a plus since most supposedly sane people weren't.

Putting his thumb and forefinger at a right angle, Leo closed one eye and moved back a bit.

"It would have to be from a low angle—or heavily re-imagined, which is also something I'm good at. Have me looking down from the bed, maybe, so my body wasn't in the way. I'd change the furniture and interior design too, of course, since whoever did this house up was so deficient in creativity."

Leo tilted his head another way, adding a few shadows to his sketch.

"You have a very interesting face, you know? Almost like you're a different person from different angles. And your eyes..."

_... are very beautiful_ , Leo just managed to stop himself from saying. It may have been the current year, as they said, but sometimes a man like him just couldn't know how a remark like that might be taken; and while he normally wouldn't have given a flying toss, this was the kind of thing that demanded delicacy, even at the expense of Leo's ego.

Well, as much delicacy as Leo was capable of when it came to human interaction.

"You remind me of a certain painting I'm having trouble remembering," he went on. "St. Sebastian, definitely, but not the one Il Sodoma did. Ah—there are so many though, and you don't always see them in conjunction with the artist's name. I used to have a print of _St. Sebastian_ by Il Sodoma on my wall at university; went through _such_ an Italian Renaissance phase. Well, I'm still in it really, so I'd know if the one I'm thinking of had been from that era..."

He trailed off in thoughts that he was abruptly pulled back from.

"... I prefer the Pre-Raphaelites, personally."

That reply, almost whispered in its exhausted, low and broken voice, but still somehow spoken as ordinarily as though they were sitting across a table from each other at a formal dinner—it sent a strange kind of thrill through Leo, and for reasons other than his relief at its coherency.

All this despite their stark contrast in taste, of course.

"Really?" he replied, without even hesitating except to pause his pencil. "I've always thought most of their works were rather... cold, somehow."

"Yes," said Riario. "I've felt that too. But haven't you thought the world was a very cold place, sometimes?"

An odd thing for a man who seemed to spend half his working life in the desert to say, if Leo had thought he'd been speaking literally.

"Well, I suppose so, but that being the case—why would you want to look at more of the same, instead of something to inspire you? That's what I feel from the Renaissance masters; inspiration—optimism—tell me, do you prefer Rossetti or Millais?"

"Waterhouse."

"Interesting." Leo shifted down so that he mirrored Riario's position almost, only with one arm supporting some of his weight in case he had to jump up in a hurry. "Waterhouse... of _Lady of Shalott_ fame?"

" _'I am half-sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shalott'_."

Knowing the quote and what it was quoted from told Leo a lot about his new friend in a single sentence.

"Only half-sick?" he wondered aloud. Then he looked right into Riario's eyes. "Is that because the other half is so entangled in the shadows that it feels sick without them?"

The eyes widened.

"Who are you?" Riario asked him.

Leo took another deep breath. "I'm someone who wants to help you. Who are you?"

All at once Riario looked down, writhing slightly on the ground, arms shifting in the restrictive sleeves of the jacket. His gaze was hidden for a long, tense moment, until he suddenly looked back and Leo flinched away from the new eyes the man was showing him, even before he answered with an equally horrific voice:

"Someone who wants to _kill_ you."

 

 

*~*~*

 


	3. Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all kudos and comments. A full month later, here are my various excuses: I wrote another fanfic in the meantime. I started not to like where I was going and thinking the writing was rubbish. I hit a snag and wrote for a different fandom to clear it. It was really cold for a week and that made me tired. The dog ate my internet. I suck. ;)
> 
> Anyway, now that's out of the way, enjoy this chapter that was supposed to take up less than half the words it does. How me write good? I don't know. The fic is going to be longer than I thought, but that's pretty much my catchphrase, lol. 
> 
> A warning for this chapter. This has sinner!Riario from S3E6 in all his glory (though Leo's given him his own special name for telling-apart purposes), and those of us who've seen that episode know he can get pretty... crude. There's one line that I'm particularly proud of--ahem, I mean, that's particularly cringe-worthy.
> 
> Also, while I don't know 'nothing' about Dissociative Identity Disorder, it definitely qualifies as 'next to'. It's just a fanfic, though. Now for what we've all been waiting for...

*~*~*

 

 

So, his first meeting with Lucrezia's cousin could have gone better.

But hey, it could have gone worse—no blood had yet been spilled so it was at least looking more hopeful so far than that guard had been worried about.

Speaking of which, the silence that came from that rather unfortunate admission from Riario was broken by two things, almost at the same time. First, Leo heard the voices of at least three of the guards coming from outside the house on the mountain winds.

Second, he heard Riario's stomach growl. The conclusion was quite obvious.

"Okay," he said. "Well, before you do that, would you like me to get you something to eat?" He quickly though over what he'd just said. "Something that isn't, you know—me?"

Strangely, because it was without a cause that Leo could see, a tear began to fall from the man's left eye, as another welled up in the right. But his was not the expression of someone crying, those eyes narrowing now with suspicion, the corner of the mouth that turned up into a cruel smirk; the tears were likely a physical reaction to whatever was bothering his eyes—some side-effect from whatever medication his was on, perhaps? Maybe stress-related?—rather than an emotional response.

"Hmm?" he said to Leo, hoarse and distorted in his voice compared to what he'd been a second ago—and also suddenly so different in tone as well, like there was a record inside him that had skipped. "You want to take me out to dinner, do you? Are you going to be my friend?"

He'd become high-pitched and mocking for the last sentence.

"Well, I hope so," Leo admitted. "I need you for my uncharacteristically not ingenious plan."

"Plan?" hissed the other man, writhing uncomfortably in his jacket, shoulder brushing the bottom of the bed. "What's that; tear down my father's company? Bring us all to justice? I'll assume from looking at you you're not of the 'execute those who defy the will of Allah' crowd, so someone else outsourced to you. Ah, was it the Dragons? Poor Vlad was so upset we cleared out that hill-side before his men could blow it up."

Leo had no idea what the man was talking about, but he inferred that Riario didn't actually know where he was or what his situation had become. Given his line of work, and how confused he had to have been already if his father had deemed it necessary to force him into a straitjacket, it was only too likely he assumed, or at least _felt_ he had been captured by 'the enemy'.

"No, I'm just a friend of your cousin—Lucrezia's."

"Oh, that whore. I suppose that means you work for my uncle?"

Much as hearing Lucrezia called that sent a visceral reaction through him, Leo couldn't find it in himself to summon righteous anger when the man in front of him was clearly... well.

"No," he said firmly. "No, I'm a friend of _Lucrezia's_ ; and I'm just as interested in keeping her away from both your fathers. Did you know it was your grandmother's birthday?"

Riario frowned.

"You..." he said, slowly and then with a flash of recognition and a devious smile. " _You're_ Leonardo da Vinci. I thought you and my cousin had broken up?"

...

Fucking hell. Well, that called for another brain reboot.

Why the fuck had Riario known that? Was he keeping tabs on Lucrezia's personal—why was Leo even bothering to ask himself when it was so obvious he was. Probably under his father's instructions, part of any surveillance the nutter could get on his twin. Maybe partially part of surveillance on Lorenzo; the other twin's business rival, if Alessandro wanted him monitored too; just to be extra paranoid.

He couldn't let it get to him.

"We did, actually," he managed after a half-second's pause. "That's why I said I was her 'friend'. Don't tell anyone though, otherwise people will think it's weird she brought me here."

"What happened?" Riario asked, faux-sympathetically. "Did she decide that even she had more self-respect than to spread her legs for an admitted queer? Or did one of you just let any one of your many venereal diseases through the net after you fucked too much? You should have stayed together and saved the rest of the world from your filth. So inconsiderate, _Artista_."

Okay, this one was going to be more difficult than Leo had anticipated, and he'd anticipated a lot after seeing the man mumbling to himself in a straitjacket; which prompted the unwise response:

"Says the man who out of all the many rooms of this house managed to find their way into the bed of 'an admitted queer'."

Unwise it may have been, but Riario only started laughing with this horrible, hacking cough-like noise. Leo quickly gleaned from this that there was no real venom in Riario's barbs; he was just kicking the hornet's nest to see what would happen.

Or maybe to get the hornets out into the open. But Leo would be keeping his hornets well-concealed for the time being.

"Oh, do your worst then," said Riario, now faux-resigned, like he mocked the idea of normal human emotions in their entirety. At the same time he shifted onto his back and spread his own legs, only losing eye-contact with Leo for a moment before he looked back. "But you'll never get _him_."

Him? That struck a chord. Riario had been talking as though he expected Leo to be here to bring his father down, but the instinct Leo had now was that _that_ was not who he was referring to with that statement; not at all. For the past minute or so he had written those few moments of rather intriguing artistic discussion off as a pretence acted by the real, vicious and irreverent Riario, but now, in an instant, he had a different theory.

As he ran through possible replies in his mind—which question to ask first? There seemed so many—he was conflicted as to whether to ignore or listen to the voice of reason in him telling him that what he was thinking was so much more likely to be just what Riario wanted him to think rather than reality. But then, even if it was that then wouldn't it be best to play along?

Because if it was, then how would he know which of the personas was the act?

And if it wasn't... there was that oh-so inappropriate thrill of excitement running through him again.

"What makes you think I'm after him?" he asked. "I might be after _you_."

"Me?" said Riario. Leo counted it a win that he sounded genuinely puzzled. "Whatever would you want with me?" he hissed a little laugh out. "It's _him_ they all want. I only decide whether to give him to them or not."

Oh yes, this was definitely it: either a man pretending to have a certain affliction in order to escape consequences for God knows what, or a real, tangible case of Dissociative Identity Disorder had fallen right into his lap—so to speak. A split-personality, to use the vernacular, and one that had progressed far enough for at least one alter to be aware of the other; if there were even only two in there. Leo felt his heart positively flutter.

The first thing he did, being the man he was, was flip another page in his sketch book over and start a new drawing; this time of the second personality. From what he remembered of his own casual research into this absolutely fascinating condition (which was everything); the more aggressive personality was, by and large, formed in order to protect the primary or host—whatever you wanted to call them, which meant chances were the person he was talking to now was not the original.

First thing first; he was going to have to come up with some method of identifying them from each other.

"Well I don't know enough about either of you to know which one might be more useful for my purpose. What's your name, anyway?"

If this personality had been shocked to hear Leo intimate that he wanted to speak with him rather than the other, then now he'd been asked his name he became positively stunned; blinking more tears over his lids and then narrowing his eyes—a look forming in them that made Leo think of a vicious dog right before it attacked.

Just in case, he scooted back a little when Riario turned onto his side to face him again.

"Girolamo Riario," he said, like he was humouring Leo with the promise of danger ahead if he didn't like the path they were going down.

Leo decided that he'd use this as the expression in the sketch, rather than the mocking grin, and said, "Now, I thought that was _his_ name. I want to know yours."

"Why should that be his name, and not mine?" growled Riario.

"He had it first, didn't he?" Leo glanced up from his sketch briefly. "Or did he?"

Like a snake the other man's upper body shot forwards—towards Leo. Frightfully fast considering his handicap, but still not close enough to actually touch him. Leo flinched anyway.

"Is it my fault if he had it first!?"

His voice rose into a violent snarl—had anyone been nearby they would have heard for sure, so Leo waited several moments to see if anyone was coming while he thought over the response, and when he was satisfied they were still alone he could only say—

"Well. You got me there. What would you like me to call you, then?"

"Hn? I'd ask you to call me by name, and him 'the worm', like I do—only I have the _slight_ feeling you wouldn't do that. So call us whatever you like; as long as neither of us gets the name that should be mine, I'll consider it fair enough." He grinned again. "But, you should know; I'll castrate you if I don't like your choices."

With a raised eyebrow, Leo once again said the first thing that had come into his head—since it had worked so well a minute ago.

"There you go fixating on me sexually again. I was hoping our discussion could be a little more... high-brow."

"Really?" Riario asked, slipping back into mockery within an eye's blink—yet it was that anger and resentment Leo felt to be the hallmark feelings of this version of him, there'd been something so much more heartfelt there. " _Please_. I've never met a so-called 'high-brow' intellectual who didn't turn every conversation back to fornication sooner or later; it makes the worm quite upset. But he's a little old-fashioned. Would you like to know who _my_ favourite artist is?"

Leonardo couldn't help but smile.

"Absolutely," he said cheerfully.

"Me!" laughed Riario. "Though I don't use a paint and canvas."

_Blood and bodies_ , Leo thought, quickly realising where that line of discussion was going. And there was an idea—if he somehow managed to get Riario locked up by actual authorities for the crimes he'd almost certainly... but no, Alessandro would almost certainly be able to have him released on compassionate leave for the sake of the birthday party.

(how his life had come to the point where those words had appeared in his head in that order, he'd never know).

Instead he shrugged and replied, "Well, you can't really get your own artistic vision realised by another; that's what my professor always taught me."

"Did he also teach you to strike up conversations with vicious killers you found lurking under your bed?"

"That one wasn't on the syllabus," Leo admitted. "Although... Oh, I know!"

As they'd been speaking, Leo had been running the question of what to call the two Riario alters to keep them separate from each other without upsetting the aggressive one, in the back of his mind. And, while simultaneously running through what he remembered of the painter Waterhouse's portfolio, he'd remembered one of the other heroines of classical literature who'd captured that man's imagination.

Miranda; watching on the beach as the storm brought the distant ship to ruin.

"I'm going to call your better half 'Ariel'," he said. "And you, you're going to be 'Caliban'."

'Caliban' appeared to consider this for a moment. Then he nodded.

"I suppose that's acceptable. Chances are I'm still going to slice your testicles off with a dirty knife—"

He cut himself off when he burst out laughing; the kind of laugh that sounded like it hurt his throat to make, as he drew his knees up as far as they would go with the bed over them and then pressed them harshly up against the frame, lifting his lower body off the floor in a strange and almost awkwardly sultry move.

Leo took the opportunity to reach in and grab him underneath his waist, giving him a sharp tug to get him out from under the bed; easier than he'd had thought it would be; the man was lighter than he looked and even that wasn't particularly bulky. Caliban made a noise of surprise when he was touched, but his shock didn't last a split-second before he was laughing his head off once again.

And even though the wheezing noise was too quiet for anyone not standing right outside to hear, Leo told him, "Shh, shh, shh," before rolling his eyes and adding. "I know, I crack myself up too. Come on, let's get you something to eat. Do you know if they have you on any medications?"

Abruptly, Caliban's laughter stopped. He looked up at Leo with his pupils shrinking from the change in light as he now lay just outside the bed.

"Dearest Father has the woman shoot me up with anything they think might shut me up." Grin returning in an instant he added, "and then whenever the worm comes back, Father says mean things at him until I have to take over again," he pouted with more faux-sympathy when he said 'mean things', then sighed. "And so the cycle continues. I'm _so_ fucking bored of it."

"I imagine anyone would be."

It would have been difficult for Leo not to let the memory of Piero's anger-twisted face spitting complaint after insult after complaint at him for... well, for his entire life, come to him now. Sure, the Prince of Parasites had never gone so far as to drug him against his will and—

\--actually, scratch that, that had been exactly what had happened. But those had been ADHD meds prescribed by a doctor (whose skill in his profession Leo was very dubious about in retrospect, but he supposed Piero wasn't to have known any better) and Leo had been a child and under Piero's care legally at the time and it just wasn't the same.

But he understood that boredom. The boredom that came after trying your best and never being good enough, for so long that you eventually began to wonder why you'd even bothered in the first place. It was the same feeling for a different situation.

Caliban still giggled every few seconds as Leo tried to gently get him to his feet without giving him room to turn around and attack; he hadn't forgotten what the guard had said about a regular man's chances even with Riario in a straitjacket—not that Leo considered himself a regular man by any means, but he was still aware that the other man's teeth at least were free and he seemed to enjoy displaying them.

He squirmed, a little, as Leo stood him up, but was otherwise surprisingly cooperative. Another audible stomach-growl solved that mystery though; Caliban was probably more than intelligent enough to realise that he had no hope of getting away in his current state and Leo was the closest thing he was going to get to an ally—or at least, someone who wasn't working for his father.

Leo was trying not to think really, about what kind of man could make the idle thought _'thank fuck I had Piero instead!_ ' pop into his head. He knew the reason most cases like this happened.

Now wasn't a good time to become angry though.

To take a peek out of the door he risked turning his back on Caliban, and managed to verify that the coast was clear without being attacked. As he'd been prepared for just that, he was curious when he turned around to find the other man watching him just as curiously, though he was soon showing Leo his teeth again. Leo decided to smile in return.

"Looks like we're in luck," he said. "Though at least one guard, your father, and the nurse are still on the grounds somewhere."

Caliban rolled his eyes. "Zita will still be looking for me, even if they told her not to. She's a whore too, you know—I've seen the way she looks at _him_. But that's not _her_ fault, so if you say anything to her I'll gut you like a pig."

"Noted," said Leo, who indeed noted all of it because he was beginning to feel that Zita was more than just a household servant in all this. "And your father?"

"Probably snoring his head off by now. I wouldn't be surprised if those lazy fucks try to keep it from him that this ever happened; he's uh... not the most forgiving of men."

Funny how so many religious zealots weren't.

"Would you play along to protect them?"

After a dismissive snort, Caliban averted his eyes in another move Leo found himself taking note of.

"Not to protect _them_ ," he muttered.

_Zita_ , Leo didn't say. He'd have to get her alone and talk to her if he could, tomorrow.

So, with all that out of the way and the path open to them, he put his arm around Caliban's shoulders—he flinched, but seemed to grudgingly allow the contact—and herded him out the door.

The trip back down to the ground floor and from there to the kitchen was rather surprisingly uneventful. Leo had considered having Caliban wait in his room while he fetched something for him, but decided it was better to take the increased risk of having Caliban caught and taken back upstairs than risk leaving him out of sight.

At the bottom of the stairs he was able to see through the glass panels that the fourth guard—the English one, he thought—had been stationed right at the front of the house to guard the entrance; but thankfully that was the direction the low light was coming from and so they were able to pass without the movement of their shadows giving them away. Caliban looked quite conspiratorial about it when they exchanged a look, which Leo had to fight down a smile at.

The only noise came once they were away from the entrance hall; Caliban leaned right over and whispered "Did Lucrezia show you the wooden box?" with his lips almost touching Leo's ear.

"What box?" Leo asked him, half concerned with keeping their progression secret, half intrigued.

But Caliban only said, "Good," then added, with his head turned away this time, "It's mine, and that diseased slut isn't allowed anywhere near it. They'd better not have taken it out of the house. It's mine."

Instinct told Leo to leave it alone for now, and ask Lucrezia about it later.

Once they'd made it to the kitchen he breathed a sigh of relief. With no windows the room was completely dark after he quietly closed the door behind them, but he didn't risk turning the light on until he had. Strangely though, the brief moment of pitch black made Caliban tense up in Leo's arm like he was frightened, rather than in the mood to try something.

Again, something for later. Fuck, he could have filled an entire notebook about this encounter already. For now he put the sketchbook he had brought along on the table and began to search for food.

Of course, no sooner had he opened the door to the enormous fridge but Caliban began to snicker again.

"Do I get to see your masterpiece, Artista?" he asked, nodding towards the sketchbook. "And when I do, are you going to hold it up and ask me to point to where my daddy touched me? Because I can't do it in this straitjacket."

_Misdirection or double-bluff_ , Leo wondered, at Caliban's exaggerated taunting. It wasn't like he'd have put anything past Alessandro at this stage, but he wasn't going to take what this alter said at face-value either; he liked too much to get a rise out of people, Leo could tell.

Instead he responded; "I'd better get you out of that, hadn't I?"

Caliban gave him a serious look.

"If you untie me, I _will_ rip your throat out with my teeth and drink your blood."

"Don't say that," Leo told him, mock-offended. "I'm about to make you coffee." He flipped the kettle on, and Caliban went quiet as the leftovers Leo had found in the fridge went into the microwave, and he opened the freezer. "A-ha!"

He turned to see Caliban tilt his head.

"Ice cream," he explained. "Your cousins and I left before dessert to get away from the evil twins, so I'd been deprived." He paused. "You don't get any, because of what you said about Lucrezia."

The other man seemed singularly unimpressed. "Cock-sucking faggot," he spat.

"And that's not going to get you ice cream any faster. Maybe if you say sorry, I'll consider it."

"I'm sorry— _boy-fucker_ , but I can't really think of any reason to apologise to a degenerate like yourself. You're the one intent on using me for some zany scheme my bitch cousin cooked up."

"The scheming is all mine, I'm afraid. Lucrezia only found the best one in the business."

"Yes, I'm sure her own brain fell out of her cunt the moment it took a cock too big for even her to handle."

The switch on the kettle flipped as it blew steam out into the air. Leo remained stunned for another half-moment as Caliban practically choked trying to keep his laughter from bursting out.

"Thank you for that image," he said, eventually. "That was lovely. Now, do you take milk with that?"

No answer—the other man was still in the throes of laughter. Leo added a liberal amount anyway; probably wasn't the best idea to have him too hopped up on caffeine after all, and stirred it before bringing it to the counter. The other side of the counter, while Caliban was still in a state he didn't trust around boiling liquids.

Then, steeling himself, he went round the back of the laughing man so he could get to the straps at the back, and that was when the laughter abruptly stopped, and Caliban looked up at him with some confusion; some fear, and something else Leo was tempted to think of as hope.

"What are you doing, you _pervert_? I told you I'd kill you if you untied me."

"I heard you," said Leo, and pulled the first strap through the buckle. "But I'll risk it. I need an accurate estimation of you for my degenerate scheme, so seeing whether you'll actually try to kill me or if you're just. All. Talk," he taunted a little at the end there, another unwise move no doubt, but too much a part of him not to do, "Will be very interesting."

He moved onto the next strap down. Now it was Caliban who was stunned.

"Has the herpes spread to your brain, faggot? Didn't you believe me? Because I killed the last godless _fucks_ who were stupid enough to free me from restraint!"

What was that Leo heard? Some kind of pain in his words? He couldn't have meant his father or those guards obviously, so...

"Ah," he replied, second strap undone. "But were they also the ones who had restrained you in the first place?"

Caliban flinched.

"I thought so," said Leo.

There were five buckles running down Caliban's back, and Leo was now halfway to getting the third undone. Caliban was beginning to realise he could move his arms more now, but if anything it was only making him more agitated, and he hissed,

"Stop it!" and yet made no effort to get away or call for help, probably because he wanted to be released. Yes, he was confused all right: he wanted to be released, but not in circumstances he wasn't in control of.

Well, Leo was going to have to keep him under control. He believed him about killing those 'other people', and believed at least some part of the information Zo had dug up was also true.

The man was dangerous.

As dangerous as Leo himself? Well, he'd never met such a man yet.

"Nope," Leo told him, pulling the fourth strap through the loop. "Unless you want me to make choo-choo train noises you'll need your arms free to feed yourself for one thing."

"I'll eat your fucking heart!"

"Well, you'll probably need your hands for that too. Last one!"

That was when Caliban turned his head away a little, before he looked halfway back and asked,

"Why are you doing this?"

_Because there are no sensible people nearby to tell me not to._

"I told you," Leo said. _Because I want to help you._ "I want to draw you. I can't have every piece with you in a straitjacket."

Now the crazy man was looking at him like he was crazy. And in that look, there was something like camaraderie, and Leo couldn't say that it was unreciprocated.

How strange, for someone he'd met no more than a quarter of an hour past. And yet, falling for Lucrezia had been almost as quick.

Not that this was anything like that.

"Don't worry," he said. "I pay my models well above the average."

And with that the last strap came undone and the jacket relaxed entirely. With it, so too did Caliban, whose head lowered facing away from Leo as he pulled the stiff white fabric forward off the other's shoulders, slowly and as gently as he could unfolding the arms so he could pull the whole damn thing off.

Even so, Caliban shifted uncomfortably, moving slowly enough that he must have been in a lot of pain—straitjackets as it turned out weren't the most conducive garments to healthy blood circulation, and this one Leo judged had been put on too tightly anyway.

And there were other coverings beneath them. Bandages, wrapped securely around Caliban's wrists—he knew he shouldn't jump to conclusions, and yet somehow he _knew._

He took both hands in his and rubbed them gently.

"There you go. You should make sure you get all your feeling back before you try to strangle me with them, eh?"

There was no insult spat at him and only the barest attempt to pull the hands away, which Leo allowed as the microwave had finished while he'd been occupied and that was half the point they'd come down for.

Hands moving back towards the chest, then stopping when it obviously became more painful and awkwardly lowering to his sides, Caliban looked up at him.

Only, he also knew at once it wasn't Caliban.

"How... " the other man said. Then he blinked and looked around the room. "... this is my grandmother's kitchen. How did you get me here?"

Leo tilted his head and peered cautiously at the one he'd called 'Ariel'—though he'd only planned on using those names when 'Caliban' was present. 'Riario', then. That said, he hadn't ruled out the possibility that this was faked; Lucrezia had called her cousin a 'master manipulator' and Leo doubted it was for nothing.

Either way, he deemed it best to play along.

"I remembered the way from upstairs," he said. "As for how you got to the house in the first place, your father brought you—it's that time of year again. Do you remember who I am?"

Riario snorted a little; half-smiling.

"A hallucination?" he tried.

"Well, you'd have had to have a pretty extraordinary imagination to come up with me. I'm Leonardo da Vinci."

Again, recognition flared.

"My cousin's former paramour?" he asked. "And she brought you here?"

That was beginning to make Leo slightly irritated.

"Why do you even know that?" he asked over his shoulder, pulling the plate out of the microwave and getting a fork. He was willing to take the risk that the 'Ariel' personality wasn't going to put a knife in his back as soon as it was turned for the time being. "No one outside our proverbial inner circle knows, and even Giuliano wasn't so crass as to post the news on Facebook. Do you pay that much attention to Lucrezia?"

The half-smile on the other man became full, and he finally looked up to meet Leo's eyes when the plate was put in front of him.

"No," he said. "But I do pay that much attention to _you_."

Leo's inner Zoroaster swiftly began to imitate the _Psycho_ theme tune.

But fear wasn't the only root that took to his mind at that pronouncement, because he'd already been overrun with excitement and fascination beneath his forcibly calm exterior, and this only increased now, at the suggestion that the interest was mutual.

"Oh?" he said, trying again for casual. "Well, I'm flattered. No wonder the other you knew as much as he did."

There was a little alarm in Riario's eyes at mention of the 'other him', but that soon turned to resignation, and told Leo that he too knew of his alter's existence.

"He was here, was he?" he said.

He didn't elaborate.

"Yeah," said Leo, and put the fork down next to Riario. "Now eat your dinner. If you finish that up there'll be ice cream at the end."

This Riario hadn't been rude at the table as of yet, after all.

"Thank you," he said, and gingerly began to twirl some of the tagliatelle around his fork. "I am most grateful. How have you enjoyed your stay here so far?"

Hand out and shifting from side to side, Leo grimaced. "Mm, could be better."

"You don't care for the mountain climate?"

"Oh the mountain is beautiful; I haven't seen a mountain yet that isn't, but whoever you got in to decorate this house ought to be thrown off it; it's like being in an asylum."

He realised what he'd said quickly enough, and brazenly added—

"Though maybe that's what your father was going for, when he brought you here. I can't say I haven't enjoyed listening to him and your uncle swap death threats, on that note, but it does upset the girls and I came here with their welfare in mind."

Riario swallowed what he'd been eating. "I thought it might be something like that," he said, then paused. "Could I... have something to drink, possibly?"

"Oh, right!" Leo slid the coffee along the table, and was glad Riario sipped from it rather than throwing it at either one of them. "But you say you'd thought so? Is that an impression your painstaking research into me has given you?"

Dark eyes flickered up towards him, and Riario pointedly finished chewing his next mouthful, before just as pointedly not answering the question—at least, not directly.

"Do you know what became of your 'Infernal Code', after Lorenzo de Medici sold it to the United States military?"

Ah.

Of course, being in the arms business Riario would have been interested in that. He picked up his bowl of ice cream and sat at the adjacent corner from his companion. Riario spoke again before he could think of an appropriate response.

"I was on the ground that day in Kismayo. Well, on a ship rather. We were escorting a certain client to Mogadishu, though of course I can't elaborate on that, and it's not very interesting anyway. But the Americans had informed us that they needed to clear the bay before we'd be allowed to leave, and so, there I was. It was like... something closer to nature, than to the clumsy projectiles of human engineering. Like a flock of bats; who knew exactly where to go to find all those little insects and end their little lives, and you designed that guidance system."

"Not for missiles, per se," said Leo, though he was still casual about it.

"But you must have known the technology could and likely would be applied to something like that when it was sold; and yet..." Leo could see the line of thought twisting together in Riario's mind as the ropes it spun snaked out into the air between them, and how much he was enjoying this spin. "and yet despite the impression your various profiles present of the epitome of the modern-day western left-wing enlightened progressive pacifist," he hissed the last part of that word, and stared even harder into Leo's eyes. "You made absolutely no protest to that application—before or after."

Someone _had_ done their homework. It was probably worrying that Leo was far more elated about that and the likening of missiles under his program as a 'flock of bats', than he had room to be angry about the questioning of his morality.

He licked a drop of ice cream away from his spoon.

"I'd never make a device whose only purpose is to kill," he said plainly, as he'd said to himself and others on many an occasion. "But I don't not make things just because they could be used for that purpose. Imagine a world where the inventor of the hypodermic needle decided not to bother because 'someone could have had an eye out with one of those things'."

Riario grinned. "I suppose you're right. And maybe the topic is too heavy for the dinner table anyway." He practically inhaled his next few mouthfuls; perhaps far more affected by his hunger than he'd been acting.

"Careful there," Leo said softly. "I wouldn't want you to make yourself sick for real."

Now he was given a look that said 'oh, please', while out loud Riario replied, "Well I am 'sick for real', in one sense of the word anyway." He winced—Leo guessed the pain in his arms was still working itself out. A long exhale followed. "I shouldn't be making you put up with me like this, really. I don't remember how I got out of wherever I was. I suppose it was him, not me who did it."

"Don't feel sorry for that. Who else am I going to discuss the Pre-Raphaelites with? Lucrezia's more into music than art, and Amelia's reading Theatre Studies." He tried not to make too much of a face, though he felt traditionally speaking that choice of BA would set back the 'getting a job' idea. "I suppose your uncle might know a thing or two—if he was the sort of person I'd spend time with willingly, which I have to say he's not shaping up to be."

"But _I'm_ more your kind of person."

"Without a doubt," Leo declared.

Riario rested his fork against his plate with a little chuckle, and there was something hopeless in that breath that Leo almost touched his shoulder on recognising it.

"You have no idea who I am."

_No one does_ , the unspoken addition was heard loud and clear by Leo.

"I always have _some_ idea," he said. "I know you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, I know what the most common cause of that is, and I've met your father, so—"

"He's never—" began Riario abruptly, and cut himself off just as sudden as if he thought he'd been about to say something he shouldn't. Then, with some conflict still there in the way he averted his eyes he continued, "... interfered with me. It's not like that."

Leo felt his eyebrows begin to journey towards his hairline.

"I haven't kept myself oblivious to the nature of my own defectiveness," Riario added quickly, and with no small distaste. "Frankly I'm surprised a sceptic like yourself believes it's a disorder and not my begging for attention."

_That's what his father thinks_ , thought Leo.

"But Zita has been trying to understand it and I've seen some of her reading materials; I know they estimate that ninety or so percent of people like me were _abused_ during childhood, but my father would never do such a disgusting thing."

The feel of a lie was all over what Riario had just said, but Leo was not quite sure which part exactly was the lie and how so, because Riario also had this look in his eye like he was assuring himself that what he'd said was also truth.

This was the kind of thing, Leo feared, that lead to one becoming conflicted with oneself. Caliban had certainly expressed no love for Alessandro.

"He is... a formidable man," Riario continued. "A righteous man. He has raised me all by himself since I was born, when my mother abandoned me."

_Oh_ , Leo thought.

He'd have to double-check that one. That was the kind of thing a master manipulator would say, after all, to a man with Leo's history. He'd have known that, sceptical as Leo was, he'd _want_ to believe it.

"—he has provided for all my needs and seen to it that I enjoy the privileged position that I do today."

"The privileged position of being forcibly restrained and drugged out of your mind?"

Riario gave him a look. "Don't be childish—you must realise I've given him no choice." He looked away again. "The other one... he has become omni-directional in his violence."

"Caliban?" Leo said. "Well, he wasn't violent towards me. Unless you count verbally, which I wouldn't."

The confusion on Riario's face as he cocked his head was actually kind of cute.

"You _named_ him?" he asked.

"Mm, It was the practical thing to do. I had to keep you separate somehow. Actually, it's a little unusual that your alter didn't already have his own name, but he wanted yours, and I told him you couldn't both have the same name so he accepted it so long as I didn't call you 'Riario' either. Not in front of him, anyway, I'm not _not_ going to call you by your own name."

"What makes you so sure it's mine and not his," Riario asked him, and if he thought that was a 'gotcha' moment like his face seemed to suggest, then he was sadly mistaken.

"I like to keep an open mind, Girolamo, but I can't help finding it difficult to believe the constant profanity and violence is how you've got along for the past few decades. In case you're wondering, I'll be calling you 'Ariel' in his presence."

He paused.

"Not as in the princess. You know what I mean."

Riario just frowned. "Princess? What, is 'Princess Ariel' the name of some celebrity singer, or something?"

Now they were both sitting there, each frowning at the other like they were crazy, and probably one and a half of them were right to.

"No?" said Leo. "Ariel the mermaid; from Disney?"

A blank look awaited him.

"My God." Where had this person been living... "Anyway, never mind. The point is your other you didn't try to kill me at all during the whole five minutes we spent together. I don't know if that's a record for him or what, but I consider it a good sign."

"A good sign concerning what?"

"Ah. Of course." Leo only just remembered that this—the real Riario hadn't been awake when he and Caliban had been discussing Leo's plan. Or rather, his plan to formulate a plan once he had all the necessary knowledge.

Inter-alter amnesia was notorious. Although, Caliban had brought up Leo and Riario's discussion about art, so it was possible it only went one way—again, not unheard of.

He had to admit though, he was becoming strangely optimistic about the plan. Or maybe he was just enjoying himself because this was all so fascinating. Or maybe it was because even after only knowing him for a few minutes, he was starting to like Riario.

The biggest problem that he saw so far, was that Riario had been able to speak of his father in... well, 'glowing' terms wasn't exactly what Leo would call it unless it was the glow given off from a man who'd been set on fire, but nonetheless there was a strong devotion there.

"Your cousin, Lucrezia, asked me to come along for more than just emotional support," he announced.

This made Riario smile. "Yes, as I said I wouldn't have thought someone like you was here for the view alone, _Artista_ though you may be."

"Why, thank you, sir—I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one."

Leo grinned. "Good to see my intuition isn't failing me. Anyway, when all is said and done, you can't deny that coming to this place is dangerous for her—and her sister."

He put emphasis on that because hadn't missed how Caliban had had no slurs to use about Amelia.

And the smile disappeared from Riario's face; replaced with something vulnerable.

"Did she tell you about the fire—"

"Mr. Riario?"

Both men looked up at once, just as the light in the dining room outside was switched on and they could see Zita standing in the doorway to the kitchen; stunned.

Fuck. This was going to cut things short, Leo could tell in an instant.

"Zita," Riario whispered—almost afraid; yet Leo doubted afraid of her. _For her_ , he thought. _Of himself._ Or Caliban.

But Zita's hands came up to clasp in front of her chest, eyes closing. "Oh, thank God," she said softly. "Thank God. Sir, are you all right?"

For a moment Riario was quiet. Then he looked down at his plate almost shyly.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm feeling much better. I'm sorry if I've got you into any trouble, Zita; I know my father can be punitive."

"We decided it was best Mr. della Rovere was not woken up right away."

Riario smiled a little. "That is probably for the best."

Then there was an awkward silence. Leo looked from Zita to Riario and tried to read the silent story that was between the two of them, but before he could make a comment Riario said;

"I should be getting back to my room now, before anyone does get into trouble. Thank you, for helping me with the meal, Mr. da Vinci. It was most kind."

Again; fuck—how was Leo supposed to handle this? Just put the man back into the straitjacket and let him go on his way? Had he had anywhere near enough time to form an image of the man reflective of reality? He couldn't even say that he knew for sure the dissociation wasn't faked; except that Riario looked so awful that even if he was that would have been equally as telling of a problem.

And there were those bandages around his wrists as well; Leo hadn't forgotten those.

Shit.

"Oh, any time," he said lightly, desperately searching his supposedly fantastic mind for something that could make this encounter end with some kind of... some kind of promise, for future meetings with this duet.

Then, as his eyes darted around the room they happened to fall on his sketchbook and he finally had an idea, even as Zita picked the straitjacket up from the stool it had been forgotten on and began to help Riario back into it.

He picked the book up and flicked through to those quick sketches he'd done. The first the Riario in front of him now, in his state of isolating trauma. The second the 'Caliban' who'd come out for a reason Leo wasn't quite sure of yet; intensity, hostility, but also curiosity looking straight out from the page; no longer lost in his own world.

The first problem with this relationship, was that it was actually going to be two relationships. But that wasn't what came into Leo's head right then, not what he wanted to share with his new acquaintance.

"It needs to be tighter than that," Riario was telling Zita, with that soft, resigned despair that made Leo want to reach out to him. Zita took a deep breath.

"It's not good for you."

She gave him a pointed look, but he looked right back at her, saying again and slower, "It needs to be tighter."

A slightly angry sigh escaped her when she pulled the strap through tighter. Riario didn't even wince.

And Leo couldn't leave things like that now, could he?

"The straps will be undone, in the final piece," he said. Riario looked right at him, despair beaten back for the moment. Leo gestured with the sketch for emphasis. "Straps, ropes, bandages; all the restraints and restrictions will swirl out from base white into colour and they'll encircle you like a cyclone on the sea."

He snapped his fingers, grinning once again.

"I'll put a reflection on the water, and call it 'Tempest'."

It would be a triptych, when each alter's individual portrait was assembled. Perhaps a whole series once he'd spent more than half an hour with the man, and had a hundred more ideas.

Riario looked at him with something like wonder, wonder that made Leo hope or wish maybe that he could see in his mind the same painting Leo saw in his own; maybe with that little Waterhouse sense of looking through a thin sheet of ice that Leo would melt away when the real painting was done.

The moment passed, Riario turned from him with some confusion as he found nothing he could say. He'd be thinking about it until they next saw each other, Leo could tell. It was what he'd wanted.

Because he'd be thinking about it too.

Then Zita was beside him without him having noticed her approach; put her hand on his arm, pressed her fingers tightly down and looked into his eyes so that he knew how much she meant it when she told him, "Thank you."

 

*~*~*

 

The next morning Leo climbed back down onto Lucrezia's balcony—while she was changing, yes, but that had been entirely unintentional—and after the sting from the slap to his shoulder had dissipated some and Amelia was able to keep a straight face once more, he leant against the wall facing out over the garden and sighed.

"I met your cousin last night," he said.

Behind him, he could feel Lucrezia suddenly stop, blouse halfway buttoned.

"Leo!" she complained. "What did I tell you about taking unnecessary risks? It's a miracle you weren't caught climbing around out there, and even more of a miracle you didn't fall and break your neck!"

"Ah, ah, ah," he said, hands raised, though still facing away, "After I left you here I went straight back to my room, I'll have you know, and he was actually there waiting for me."

"What!?"

"Well, you did say most of the rooms in the house were locked—he'd just found one that wasn't to hide from the guards in."

"Hide? You mean he really wasn't ill after all?"

Leo cringed and paused to rub his forehead a little. Even though the cousins were less than close—and Riario or at least the 'Caliban' alter seemed to have a particularly low opinion of Lucrezia—they were still family and likely this affliction had had its foundations laid by Alessandro, whose exploits simply upset Lucrezia as a rule.

Had he also victimised her somehow, he wondered.

He sighed again. "He was ill all right. But not physically. I mean, I'm not a recognised psychiatrist, but he seems to have suffered a complete psychotic break." He paused. "Among other things. He was still in a straitjacket when I found him."

Lucrezia didn't have anything to say to that; after a beat of silence Leo heard her bed bounce as she sat on it and risked a glance behind himself to see her reaction, and now she was almost dressed he remained facing her. He didn't see her face though, inclined down into the palm of her hand as it was.

On the other bed, Amelia could only frown like she thought she'd heard him wrong.

"Huh?" she said.

"Sorry," Leo said, rubbing the back of his head. "That was a bit blunt, wasn't it? Trouble is, there isn't really a way to ease into something like that—and we don't have much time as it is. I found out yesterday that your uncle's tapped the phones."

Lucrezia let out a desperate laugh and looked back up with equally desperate eyes.

"Things just get better and better, don't they?" Then her forced smile dropped. "Do you know if Zo's all right?"

"As long as he stays in the town, he should be fine. But I want to rendezvous this morning if we can—there are some supplies I need him to pick up for me."

There was a little 'program' in Leo's head that picked up on the oddness of his feeling almost nothing in regards to Zo's safety being Lucrezia's first concern after hearing that; his heart too full of excitement at this new—

He shouldn't, really shouldn't have thought of Riario as a 'project'; as he'd been about to. As he couldn't help but do, even as he chastised himself for it. No matter what the man had done, he was a person after all—well, two people—but both on their own and together Riario and Caliban were just so fascinating, their dysfunction so captivating... it was like finding a _muse_.

_You can feel this_ , he told himself, _and still think rationally about a solution to the situation. Do what's best for all involved. It isn't like you're thinking of seducing the poor thing_.

Just to be contrary—ironically, just like he imagined Caliban would have, if he'd heard those thoughts—the memory of the Caliban alter smiling like a predator with those huge dark eyes wide, twisting his body provocatively came to Leo's mind at once.

_Yeah, yeah_ , he thought to himself. _It's not like you'd really do it though._

"It might be better if we talked over what happened last night away from the house anyway. We can leave to go into town, right?"

"It should be," Lucrezia said with a sigh. "But my uncle's never had the place crawling with guards before."

Leo considered it for a moment. "Your father would let us go, though. He's too subtle a man to try keeping us here, and I've no doubt he has some contingency in regards to anything his brother might get up to."

Lucrezia turned her head back to Amelia, who still looked like she was suddenly hearing them speak a different language. "What do you think?" she asked her.

Amelia's eyes widened, her knees drawn up to her chest beneath her blankets. She shook her head.

"I have no idea what's going on, Lu-Lu. Do you think it's true Girolamo might have... had a breakdown?"

Another rueful non-laugh began Lucrezia's answer. "I'm surprised it took this long," she said. "Or never mind that—I'd actually be surprised if it hadn't happened before, but I'll tell you about all that in town. Come on; Leo and I will wait outside while you get dressed."

"Lu-Lu?"

"Not in this house," Lucrezia insisted. She didn't meet either Leo's or her sister's eyes, but her fists were clenched tightly enough that the other two decided to go along with her request for the time being.

Lucrezia opened the door and Leo followed her out, leaving Amelia to get ready but reluctant to stray far from her side.

The summer sun threw squares of warm light through the windows of the hall and onto the bleach-white walls. Those squares seemed to be the focus of Lucrezia's eyes when she leant against the wall by the staircase and wrapped her arms around herself for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature.

It was a lovely warm day, after all.

Leo was slow in his approach when he came to stand next to her. While he waited for her to speak first, his mind wandered to the rooms upstairs, wondering if the sun was reaching them too. Riario had seemed sensitive to the light the night before, but then, his eyes had looked so red that—

"I should make my mind up whether I feel sorry for him or not," Lucrezia said, and clearly to herself as much as Leo.

That was how Leo spoke half the time though, so it hardly bothered him. He waited for her to continue, but she paused for a long time before craning her neck around the staircase to the rooms along the corridor adjacent to the one she'd stayed in.

There was an open door at the end of that hall. The inside of that room was quite dark, and what Leo could see of it seemed every bit an ordinary study, but something about it made Lucrezia flinch and tear her eyes away to look at the carpet again, shaking her head.

"They still have that awful box. God knows what that monster uses it for now."

"Box?" Leo echoed, and took a second look.

A large wooden box was just visible next to an almost empty bookshelf. Just under knee-height. But he had no way of knowing if it was the one Caliban had mentioned.

"He locked me in that box once when we were children," Lucrezia told him, with a humourless laugh. "Left me in it for an hour—I nearly wet myself, that little... most people would say that was just kid's stuff."

"But," Leo added for her.

"But." Her eyes were fear, disgust and regret all pressed into one when she met his. "My grandmother died when I was six and he was seven; that was the first birthday, and the first time we ever met. He told me that the box was where bad people with lots of sin went to pray until their sin went away. Told me girls had more sin than boys, but we were too weak to be freed from sin 'the quick way'. Told me he couldn't play with me until I didn't have sin anymore."

Leo's heart was sinking further and further. It wasn't necessarily describing a malicious situation, but given everything else he knew... he _knew_.

"When my father came and let me out he didn't scold Girolamo. He only asked him did I really have to go into the box for so long, and Girolamo said—like nothing was wrong; _'I've been put in for a whole day before, when I had bad thoughts'_."

She was shaking now. And in her some of that same despair Leo had seen the night before was rooted in amongst the anger.

"And my father _laughed_. You don't know, when you're that young... or rather, you _know_ , but even then you trust, you _trust_ that your father does the right thing. You trust that if your uncle was doing something wrong he'd put a stop to it."

A deep breath left her throat.

"I'm not surprised Alessandro's pushed him too far. But..."

Leo probably shouldn't have said anything while Lucrezia was in such a vulnerable state, but his mouth opened all the same, and words came out and he had been eager to speak them.

"What about the fire?" he asked.

Lucrezia looked at him like he'd punched her.

"He... told you... about—"

"Only mentioned that there was a fire," Leo added hastily, "when I said I was worried you might be in danger here. Asked me if you'd said anything about it—I didn't get the chance to ask for elaboration. But we don't have to talk about it if—"

"No," said Lucrezia. Her fists clenched, and along the better-lit corridor the door to Amelia's room opened. She came out still smoothing down her own top. "No, I should tell both of you. I've been telling myself I should since we arrived, only..."

"Only?"

Her look turned pleading, and her voice followed; two things he found himself despising. "Can we wait until we're in town? I want... well, I don't _want_ Zo to hear it, but I want..."

"I understand. We'll wait so that you don't have to tell the story twice."

He put his arm around her.

And he looked up, towards the top floor of the house.

 

 

*~*~*


	4. Phlegethon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I'd hoped this would be 4 or 5 chapters? Ha ha ha. Those were the days.
> 
> Anyway, as usual, this was originally going to be just half of a much more substantial chapter, but it got too long, which is why it's short. Geddit? The good news is this means much of the next chapter has already been written, so it should be posted, oh, I don't know. Some time this year?
> 
> Thank you everyone for your kudos and comments. Hope this approaches worth waiting for, despite neither Riario nor Caliban appearing in person - Zo does, so that should make up for it. Some of this was hard to write, but I think it turned out okay. Enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: Okay, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks like this update somehow hasn't pushed the fic to the top of the list, so I don't know if anyone is seeing that it's been updated. Don't know if there's anything to be done about it, but ranting always makes things better, right?

 

*~*~*

 

The ghosts of the ancient accord between the people of the town and the Family that lived on the mountain still haunted its streets, and the eyes of the people walking them. Each adult stopped what they were doing when they saw Lucrezia and Amelia approach; those of middle age and older quickly bowed their heads and stood still until the girls had past, while the younger ones looked away just as swiftly.

Only the children took no notice; three boys nearly knocked Leo down with a hastily yelled "Sorry!" from two of them as they ran past. It was the first thing to make Lucrezia smile since they'd left the house.

"No cheering crowds for the returning princesses?" Leo mused idly.

"I think the crowds here would more likely be formed to spit at us," she replied, not without humour.

Amelia reached forward and tapped her sister's shoulder. "Don't say that, Lu-Lu," she admonished. "The people who live here are really nice. Is that your friend sitting in the cafe?"

Leo followed the direction she was looking in—having been denied the space to point out Amelia also considered her cousin 'really nice', and he was almost certainly a mass murderer—towards a small cafe on the corner of the street they'd turned onto, at which a tall and familiar figure sat.

"I'm afraid so," he said. "Whatever you do, don't accept any drinks from him. It's a lesson I've had to learn and relearn over the years."

Lucrezia shoved him semi-playfully and snorted, "Leo!" with a shake of her head. Another win for him, he felt.

Zo rolled his eyes as soon as he noticed them coming.

"Oh, here comes trouble," he muttered—loudly enough for them all to hear.

"What was that, Archie, old chum?" Leo asked. "Did I hear you say how simply marvellous it was to chance a meeting while you were on your spiritual journey through the mountains?"

Zo gave him the finger, which made Amelia laugh so abruptly she had to put her hand over her mouth. Lucrezia just glared, which Zo cringed a little under.

"Sorry about that," he said. "I'm on my best behaviour from now on, I promise."

"Does that mean we can accept drinks from him?" Amelia asked, still giggling.

"Oi!" Zo spread his arms. "What have you been saying about me, Leo? 'Cause I'll have you know I have a few stories of my own along the lines of—"

"Have you met my good friend Zoroaster?" Leo cut in quickly. "Zoroaster, may I present Miss Amelia Donati, recently of the University of Edinburgh?"

Hand held out, Amelia grabbed it eagerly and shook, and from the blush that appeared on her face Leo guessed she had some similar tastes in men to her sister.

Not that he wouldn't, if he hadn't known the man too well for that.

"Good to finally meet you," Zo said. "How've you been finding Edinburgh?"

"Edinburgh is fantastic," Amelia exclaimed, then averted her eyes for a moment as though to say 'as opposed to this place', before suddenly brightening up again. "We're doing _'As You Like It'_ in the Autumn, I'm going to be Orlando—it's a gender-swapped cast version."

Leo almost made a polite inquiry, but managed to stop himself when he realised he'd been about to start off with 'I prefer _'The Tempest'_ , but'. Not because he thought it would have hurt Amelia's feelings or something silly like that—she probably hadn't even had any say in the text, but because of the sudden feeling it brought him to remember the play; the painting, and the prisoner back in the house.

Prisoners.

It was a cold feeling, like this happy meeting had suddenly become a dangerous place—like the ship going into Prospero's storm. Silly of him to think so, really, as it had always been moderately dangerous here.

"Oh, well Leo would know all about that," said Zo, rolling his eyes again. "How long did your 'gender-fluid' phase last, again?"

"Ha ha ha," said Leo. "Though, misguided as that three weeks or so might have been, I probably shouldn't mention it where the ears of dear old Uncle Alessandro, righteous defender of the faith, might be listening. I overheard the guards talking about you last night; which made it pretty obvious he's tapped the phones."

Zo had had a rather nice looking cup of near-black coffee against his lips when Leo made that announcement, and sadly had to spit a sip out on hearing it.

"Shit, really?" he asked.

Leo nodded. "And we now know why he's so paranoid this year." He glanced towards the girls, as Lucrezia ordered their own drinks from the waiter in a way that made it clear she was trying her best to sound normal and Amelia quickly looked down and the red gingham tablecloth. "Turns out their cousin didn't catch some tropical disease after all—he's had a psychotic break from what I'm guessing is years of being his father's son."

Zo stared at him.

"What?"

"My official diagnosis is 'cuckoo for Coco Puffs'."

That attempt at morbid humour got him a nice glare from Zo. "That's the technical term for it, is it?" he asked sarcastically.

“They’ve actually got him in a straitjacket and everything, but he managed to get out last night and we had a nice little chat.”

“Fuck. What did he say?”

“Well,” Leo’s first impulse was to say that mostly he’d said he was going to kill him, but he had a feeling that might not go down so well with Zo out of context… or for that matter in context. The point was it was probably best to start with what Riario himself had said, as opposed to the inimical alter ego. “… he knew a surprising amount about me, as it happened—far more than I knew about him, that was for sure. Had an interest in my Infernal Code after witnessing its capabilities first-hand in Somalia.”

“He… knew about you,” Lucrezia asked, sounding worried again.

Leo nodded. “Not entirely surprising; he has every reason to be interested in weapons technology, you, and Lorenzo, and I happen to be a point where those three things intersect. And of course, once you have heard of me, it’s only natural to want to know more—on which note I’m going to want you to look into a few things for me.”

He addressed that last part towards Zo again, thinking about what Riario had said about his mother and wondering exactly how manipulative the man had meant it to be—whether it was true or not.

“Yeah, of course,” said Zo. “But you were able to get this out of him? He sounds pretty coherent.”

This was where Leo had to sigh. Whether Riario was—to remain within the Shakespeare theme—pulling a ‘Hamlet’ gambit or not, chances were he needed help either way. And Leo’s instinct told him the man was closer to Waterhouse’s _Ophelia_ than Hamlet in regards to the veracity of his psychosis.

“If I was to say the words ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’,” he started cautiously. “What would come to mind?”

“Hollywood,” said Zo, blunt as Yorick's skull.

“That’s what I was afraid you'd say.”

Zo rolled his eyes. “Leo, you have got to be kidding,” he said. “A split-personality? Really?”

“It’s a recognised condition,” Leo said. “Even if some elements of that recognition are controversial. And Lucrezia’s already confirmed for me that the caveat of ‘persistent childhood abuse’ can be ticked, even if he himself denied it. Well, the primary ‘him’ did, anyway, the alter was a bit… difficult, but he implied the opposite.”

“You do realise you’re talking about the same person, don’t you? A murderous nutter who’s probably read all there is to know on split-personalities and the so-called geniuses who fall for them?”

“Murder?” repeated Amelia, sitting up a little straighter. “Who’s Girolamo supposed to have murdered?”

Before Leo could cease cringing, Lucrezia cut in with—

“Crossgate targets, I expect. Legal murder, as much as there is a rule of law in the places my uncle likes to take advantage of.”

“Exactly,” said Zo. “And you know him better than we do, don’t you? What would you say to Leo’s expert diagnosis?”

Zo might have expected a sour look and a shake of the head from Lucrezia, as Leo might have, but to his surprise the expression on her face was pensive – doubtful, but at the same time troubled: like she thought it might explain a few things.

“This was a recent break,” said Leo, to encourage an answer “So I gather. So it’s all too possible that every time you’ve seen him before now—”

“About the fire…” Lucrezia interrupted, and Leo fell silent at once.

There was also a general silence that ensued as he and the others waited for her to gather whatever strength she needed to continue. A silence that lasted perhaps beyond what most people would have taken as cue to change the subject, but they all waited nonetheless, and eventually Lucrezia frowned to herself and shook her head.

"You remember when I said that something had happened that had made me finally doubt my own father's character?" she asked them.

Leo and Zo both nodded, but Amelia picked up on what she'd said in context with her previous sentence, and her imagination went a little wild.

"You mean… you really do think Dad started the fire?" she asked—loud enough in her alarm that she quickly looked from side to side to see if anyone had heard right after. But they were the only ones out in front of the café—on the street in general, come to think of it—and the staff had all disappeared inside the kitchen after serving them their coffee.

Lucrezia rolled her eyes, "No, Amy—of course he didn't. No, what happened that day wasn't about what Dad did, but about how he reacted; and not to the fire, exactly, but…"

She took a deep breath.

"On that day, when you and dad were down in the garden, Alessandro… assaulted me."

Leo felt his heart constrict.

But he wasn't surprised.

"Fuck," said Zo, and stood up without another moment's wait, face twisting and dark eyes becoming uncharacteristically cold. Leo reached out and grabbed his wrist at once, lurching slightly in his chair to keep his friend in one place.

"Do you even know where you're going?" he asked.

Whatever his anger at what he'd just heard had been like for him, it was always a comfort for Leo to know he could still shock Zo out of it. The flash of coldness passed, and instead he was stared at incredulously.

"Are you serious?" Zo shot back. "Did you not just hear what she said – or did I imagine it? Maybe we're all going crazy, I mean it was only a matter of time – "

"I heard," said Leo. He couldn't process it yet though. "And I want to hear more. I'd also rather you left Italy with just as much lead in your body as you came in with."

That just made Zo roll his eyes and try to yank his hand away, but fortunately Lucrezia was of the same mind as Leo on this issue.

"Zo, please, don't," she said, shaking her head. "I'm telling you this so that you all know what we're dealing with – Alessandro isn't the problem so much, anyone could tell he was an evil fuck a mile off. But my father… and Girolamo," she looked pointedly at Leo, "they're trickier. And I can only imagine whatever breakdown my cousin has had has only made that worse."

Her eyes passed from Leo's to Zo's and back again as she spoke, but she never once looked to Amelia; frozen with shock, as she continued.

"You need to hear the whole story."

Another long pause followed. Zo pulled his hand out of Leo's grasp with more force, and an annoyed glance, but he didn't storm off. Exhaling deeply, he sat back down at the little table and folded his arms, knees spread wide apart.

"I'm listening," he said.

Lucrezia nodded. "I was eighteen, I think," she said. "Or around that age. I'd always known my uncle was bad news, you know – you've met him, Leo; inanimate objects would be wary of him. But he managed to corner me that time, said it was about the whole stupid inheritance thing, knew I wanted nothing better than to stop having to come to this wretched place…"

She ran her fingers through her loose hair.

"I followed him down to the kitchen. And we passed Girolamo on the way – my uncle just yelled 'what are you doing, you have work to do!' or something like that, and he was off like a rabbit. But he hesitated halfway out the door and looked back like he was asking his dad if what he was doing was really such a good idea, and that was when I started to get worried."

There was a beat while Lucrezia sipped her coffee.

"Anyway, Alessandro just yelled at him to get out again, and he scurried away." Her finger tapped restlessly on the handle of her coffee mug. "I won't go into detail about what happened next. At one point I realised what he was planning to do and I started trying to stall him… I don't know how long it took. It seemed like forever. I suppose he didn't get too far all things considered, one hand under my shirt, but that was when Girolamo came running back and threw the door open, and he went, 'Father, the conservatory's on fire!' and we all had to go out into the garden."

Not looking at Amelia, she addressed her nonetheless.

"That was why I was crying when I came down the path to tell you about it. Actually I think the tears were of relief more than anything, that it had happened at just the right moment… but then I thought that was suspicious, and even though all those investigators always said the same thing… I asked him about it."

"Dad?" Amelia asked softly.

It was the wrong guess, and Leo somehow knew it.

"Riario," he said.

Lucrezia nodded. "It was too perfect otherwise," she said. "And he was the only one that knew what was about to happen. But when I managed to get him alone, asked him outright, 'did you start that fire', he gave me this look, Leo, like he was going to kill me for asking – and he _slapped_ me. So hard in the face, I didn't know what was happening. And then he just said 'stay away from my father!' and fucked off," she waved her hand, "I just… well, it made me question his motives."

"… he what?" said Zo.

As if pained, Lucrezia shut her eyes then looked at Zo again. "Don't try to go again, Zo, even if it wasn't for the armed guards it would be too dangerous. The man's a trained killer, that much at least I can say about him with certainty."

"… and yet," said Leo, frowning off into the distance.

It wasn't that he thought Lucrezia was wrong about Riario or Caliban or both of them being a killer. But he didn't think either of them, even Caliban at the end of the day, really wanted that. Riario himself had seemed non-violent, and probably resigned to whatever deeds he'd done and expected himself to do in the future. Caliban, on the other hand, was more like someone who had been pushed too far, determined to prove the villain – the part that tried to drain their mind of all the toxicity Riario stored up.

One day in the mansion and a good half-hour in their company alone and Leo could see that poison everywhere around the man. _'My father is a righteous man'_ indeed.

"What did Dad do?" asked Amelia.

Lucrezia still couldn't bring herself to look her sister in the eye. "Laughed it off," she muttered. "I told him right away, and all he said was that he was sure Alessandro didn't mean any harm, that he was just trying to scare me because he wanted the money." She laughed bitterly. "What can I say? It worked. And Dad was just so obviously more interested in winning than in what might happen to me. The only reason I've come here since is that I have no doubt he has just as little interest in what might happen to you."

She shrugged.

"But you were so young back then. I couldn't…"

Leo decided to cut in before another silence could follow. "Do you still think it was Riario who started the fire?"

"I'm almost certain he did," said Lucrezia. "And I'm pretty sure it was so that he'd stop his father from doing anything to me. But I don't know whose sake he thought he was doing it for."

That was also an interesting line of thought. While Caliban had expressed vitriol for both Lucrezia and his father, Riario had only praised the latter, so it was possible the intervention had been done to stop Alessandro from doing something that could have gotten him into trouble, rather than to help Lucrezia.

To know whether or not that was the case though, for that he'd have to get to know him better. And he couldn't help the flash of excitement that brought him. It was almost making him impatient, the urge to race from the table back up to the house, slip past the guards, administer a quick sedative to Alessandro (followed up with some kind of aggressive laxative, for Lucrezia's sake) and sit with Riario and talk and talk and talk until he could have done a series on the man, and his other half.

Then they could bring down the twins.

Oh yes, that's what he was thinking now. Snatching their children out of their respective grasps wasn't enough anymore, they were going all the way down – the both of them – and if they thought he couldn't manage it, well. He'd just have to drop them both Francesco Pazzi's line, assuming the warden was giving it out.

And after that…

Fuck. There was a loaded question. _One thing at a time, Leo,_ he tried to tell himself, but he knew that vein of the matter was going to be on the back burner in his mind for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Lucrezia continued to express her own thoughts on the matter.

"It's not that I don't appreciate his life has probably been a living nightmare up to this point. Or that I don't think he wouldn't have chosen a different path for himself. And I know what it's like to be compelled to do things you know are wrong. But it doesn't change the fact that you did them, and the things I know he's done… they can't be erased, Leo."

"No, but it might mean I have something to work with."

"Maybe Zita would know something," said Amelia, as someone grasping at straws.

It seemed a bit of a random comment, but Leo guessed she was just trying to help. "Yeah, maybe," he said.

"… we could ask her?"

He blinked. Amelia was looking at him like she'd expected a different answer, but his mind was far away from Zita at the moment. Then the girl glanced off to the side and behind him, gesturing that way to make him turn around, and when he did he saw exactly what she'd meant.

Far from it being a random thing to come to mind, Zita was actually just down the road as they spoke, conspicuous in her colouring as she picked apples from a stall at the end of the small street into her basket.

"Oh, right."

When she looked up a few seconds later she soon caught sight of them, and Leo waved her over. She stilled; looked from side to side, but was surprisingly swift in her decision to follow through, for all she had the look of someone marching into hell she did so with determination.

"That's…" Zo began.

"Riario's nurse," Leo explained. "Probably picked up from one of Crossgate's escapades, but she seems to honestly care about him."

Zo rolled his eyes. "Great. I'm sure it's as good a love story as fucking _Twilight_."

Leo clicked his tongue, but it did make him think about the relationship between the two of them again. 'I've seen the way she looks at him', Caliban had said, and threatened to kill Leo if he spoke ill of her. Granted he'd threatened to kill Leo for any other reason he could think of as well, but this had seemed different, and he certainly couldn't deny there was affection towards her on Riario's part.

Perhaps more important had been how _she'd_ thanked Leo on discovering her patient safe and sound alongside him in the kitchen. It had been more than for finding the lost sheep, the look in her eye had told him that.

"Hello, Zita," Amelia greeted. Her cheerfulness was poorly forged by this point.

Zita gave them a small curtsey when she reached their table, making Zo blink like he'd stepped into an alternate universe. After looking around for guidance from person to person, he bowed his head back to her like it was a custom.

Leo reached forward and tapped him on the head. "Don't mind this one," he told the woman, as Zo hissed in surprise. "How's everything back at the house?"

She'd have known about Zo anyway from talking to the guards, and though she looked at him she didn't ask. Her gaze lingered instead on the girls.

"Riario's their cousin," Leo reminded her.

"And they are the daughters of their father," she reminded him in turn. "I know all about what kind of man _he_ is."

He'd have guessed she did – she seemed sharp enough.

"Is Riario anything like _his_ father?" he asked her.

Her head bobbed as if to say 'touché', and she placed her basket of fruit and vegetables on the table. (If nothing else, it at least looked like dinner was going to be nice this evening). The question had only been semi-rhetorical though, because he'd wanted her opinion on that. But she chose to take it as fully rhetorical for the moment.

"Mr. Riario slept better than he has in days, thank you," she said. "And there were no problems this morning."

"The other one didn't show up, you mean?" Leo asked.

Zita's head turned wildly from side to side, but Leo already knew there was no one within earshot but the five of them, as word must have spread around the town quickly to avoid the area, so he went on—

"I'm what you might call a specialist in solving problems—"

"—replacing one problem with another, maybe," Zo muttered. Leo kicked him under the table. "Ow!"

"—and I think you and I know what's happening with Riario is only going to get worse. Saying 'you can trust me' is probably worth less than a scrap of paper to write it on to someone like you, who knows what these people are like, but something has to change soon and I'd hope you could take what happened last night as a show of good faith."

As he spoke Zita alternated between frowning as she thought his words over, and looking at him intensely, warily. It wasn't that her gaze was intimidating to him, but he felt a touch uncomfortable under it because she seemed so sincere in contrast to everyone else he'd met here, save Amelia, who was hastily grabbing a chair from another table and motioning for Zita to sit down with them.

This she did, if slowly, and Leo waited for her answer.

"I am more grateful than you know for what happened last night," she said. "Mr della Rovere will not hear of it, but I believe Mr Riario's dissociation is real; I know what kind of man he is, and has been for the past five years. If he had hurt himself, or if the 'other' had hurt anyone else…"

"Caliban," Leo interjected, as she trailed off. She cocked her head and he shrugged. "We have to call him something. He said he didn't mind as long as I referred to the host as 'Ariel' rather than 'Riario'."

"Like the Disney princess?" Zita asked him dubiously. Zo snorted beside him and Lucrezia had an almost funny blank look on her face.

Leo snapped his fingers. "See, you know it!" he exclaimed. "I might as well have been talking about Zo's—childhood imaginary friend for all Riario recognised it when I was trying to assure him I meant the _Tempest_ Ariel."

He congratulated himself on not saying 'blow-up doll' at the last second, as his original intent had been. Probably not a term you should use with a woman you just met, after all. (not that Zo had had either of these things, to his knowledge). But either way Zita only looked more serious.

"I am not surprised about that," she said. "Even when I first started working for him I realised Mr Riario had had a very sheltered upbringing. Mr della Rovere had not allowed him to watch television or see films as a child. He told me once he was caned if he tried to touch the television they had in the house."

"And what a fine fellow such a childhood has made of him," Zo said with false cheer. "Dad of the year, your Mr della Rovere, if his twin doesn't have him poisoned so he can take the title."

"It gets worse from there," said Zita gravely. "But I hadn't thought the other Mr della Rovere was like that?" she directed her question towards the girls.

Amelia shrunk back some in her chair, but Lucrezia actually seemed more relaxed than before – probably with the weight of her story off her shoulders for the first time in ten years, and she answered—

"My father doesn't take delight in causing physical pain like his brother does. But he's no more human for it at the end of the day."

Zita seemed to understand. Zo had another question though.

"How come they're both 'della Rovere' and you lot are 'Donati' and 'Riario', though?"

Lucrezia rolled her eyes. "Another clause in dear old Grandmother's will," she said. "My grandmother hated men as a gender, apparently, and made it a condition that any children to be considered for the will had to bear the name of their mother to be accepted as a potential candidate."

The word 'mother' pinged at Leo's interest.

"So 'Riario' is his mother's name?"

But Lucrezia shook her head. "No, though that's a story that I don't know every part of. My grandmother wanted to cause trouble with the will, as I said, but there came a point when it must have been obvious to her that only my father was going to play along, which would have brought all the money to me at once since Amelia wasn't born yet. Then Alessandro, who'd left the family years and years before, suddenly turned back up with a son a year before she died."

She frowned then, as though suddenly remembering something.

"Did I say before that the first birthday party was the first time I met Girolamo? Because now that I think about it, that's not true. I'd seen him before in one of my grandmother's other houses, before she came back here to die. I remember my father telling my mother not to worry, that his mother wouldn't want to give any money to a male heir, and being so shocked when Grandmother decided to accept him into the will. That was a very strange time."

"How so?" asked Leo.

"Grandmother _favoured_ Girolamo. I was very young when she died, but I do remember her being cold and distant with me – and I also know I heard my father say she showered him with affection when he was brought to visit. I can only imagine she did so to screw with the twins. Anyway, that was when she allowed him to be given the name 'Riario', which was her mother's maiden name, because his actual mother must have never been married to my uncle. I have no idea what happened to her."

Leo imagined that she'd either had the good sense to get as far away from Alessandro as possible, or she hadn't and she'd suffered the consequences for it. And though he knew he shouldn't have made judgements in the case of the former – better the woman get herself away and live than remain trapped or worse if those were the only alternatives – it irked him to think she wouldn't take her son with her.

'Projection', maybe, as Zo would have said. Even though this was hardly the same, Leo remembered the long nights he'd spent wishing his own mother could have done so, and the long shouting matches he'd spent screaming that wish back at Piero. He supposed he was too close to tell.

"I know that look," Zo told him, echoing Leo's own thoughts.

Leo promptly decided to change the subject.

"Zita, you say you've known Riario for years now; this dissociation must be relatively recent then. Do you have any idea what might have caused it?"

This was information Zita was reluctant to tell, as her eyes narrowed and avoided anyone else's and she took a deep breath. Leo waited a long moment before pressing.

"Zita?"

She met his gaze again. "I don't trust you not to use what I'm about to say to hurt Mr Riario through legal means in order to stop these ridiculous birthday parties," she said. "But honestly? He's better off in some government's prison than in his father's. Crossgate has not been authorised by any involved nation to act within the Yemen. But it has been, and two months ago Mr Riario was captured by… enemies, in that place. They held him for twenty-four days."

Ah, so Leo's earlier musings about an op gone wrong hadn't been so far from the mark after all. It distracted him from the sudden clench in his heart – that human concern acting up again, he felt compelled to try and reassure himself –

"He didn't seem to have suffered… too many, physical injuries, when I saw him last night?"

The bandages around his arms notwithstanding, but Leo would have bet the contents of the Louvre that they'd been covering self-inflicted wounds. Zita only shook her head.

"Whatever they did," she said, "it did not leave too many physical marks. Only the signs of heavy restraint, and the redness around the eyes – that I think reappears psychosomatically, every time 'Caliban', as you call him, is around."

Leo saw the first stirrings of relief that she had someone to confide this in in Zita then and there, and balanced that small victory against the problem of her words. Not that he would have rather Riario had been burned with a soldering iron or whatever, but this meant the truth of what happened was something Riario would have to tell him himself – at least to some extent.

"He escaped from where they were holding him on his own," Zita went on. "And when he came back, the very first thing he did…" she paused, and seemed to struggle even more with these words than what she'd said before. "He walked right into Mr della Rovere's office, and tried to kill him. If I hadn't followed him up there – "

"You couldn't have just let him do it?" Zo interrupted.

Much as he might have agreed, Leo still tapped him with a hasty 'Shh!' and nodded so Zita would continue. She sighed, with a look towards Zo.

"Don't misunderstand me, I would see that man dead more than most, but not at the cost that would have come to Mr Riario. When he came back to his senses and realised what he'd tried to do he—"

She quickly cut herself off, but Leo could fill in that blank with his previous conclusions.

"Mr della Rovere was surprisingly understanding about it. He was even _nice_ to Mr Riario for a short time; I have never seen him be nice to his son before." She sighed again. "But the 'other' came back, and kept coming back, and soon his patience wore out. I've been worried." She gave Leo a pointed look. "About what he might do. He is a man who prefers simple solutions."

The simplest solution Leo could think of—presuming Alessandro wanted his son alive to one day get a hold of old Granny's inheritance—was a lobotomy. For an ordinary situation that might have been a ridiculous thing to think, Leo himself almost dismissed it offhand, but the man had had fuck knew how many people killed and was an obvious sociopath, so how could that be beyond him? It certainly wasn't like it would have been a question of 'means'.

"He does run the risk though," he said, as if to himself, "if he did something too drastic, of having Francesco step in and try to gain legal custody. It wouldn't be difficult for _him_ to have his brother declared an unfit guardian, and he could just stick Riario in a hospital and keep him there past the next birthday party. Bob's your uncle."

Zita nodded. "That thought also crossed my mind. I even had wondered, despite his own nature," she glanced at the girls, "whether involving the other Mr della Rovere might not be an idea."

Lucrezia took a very deep breath, blown out from between her lips, and Amelia looked hopeful enough, but Leo's instinct immediately told him no.

It wasn't that it might not have been a solution. Indeed, if he'd been Francesco, he might have started planning on it as soon as he saw his nephew's condition – which despite Alessandro's attempts at obfuscation was probably inevitable. But he wouldn't have any interest in actually helping Riario. He'd have just put him in a home somewhere.

And indeed, it would have been in his interests to _make sure_ that was permanent, so no, Leo was going to have to think of something else.

"I need to spend more time with him," he muttered. "Them."

"Spend more time with a murderous lunatic, sounds like a great idea," said Zo, then at Zita's glare said, "Come on. Tell me he isn't."

"It's not his fault," she said.

"I didn't say anything about fault, did I? If I come up to the mansion tomorrow morning to find you've all been eviscerated and hung from the castle walls, whether it's his fault or not isn't going to be bringing anyone back to life."

Leo frowned. "You wouldn't though. Not all of us, at any rate. Well, definitely not me. He had ample opportunity to show off whatever eviscerating skills he might have last night, and he didn't touch me."

"Mr Riario admires you, very much," Zita told him. "For more than the past year he has spoken of you and your work often, and I have seen him read your research papers to calm himself after Mr della Rovere has been particularly unkind. He keeps a collage of the artwork you've posted online and went to both your exhibitions last year – the painting you did of 'Phlegethon' he had a print made out of, and put it on the wall of one of his flats."

The only reason Leo couldn't have said his eyes almost popped out of his head there was that then he wouldn't have had a term to describe the looks on everyone else's faces.

"… the fuck?" Zo breathed out. "Leo, when you said this guy knew a lot about you, I didn't think you meant he was your fucking stalker."

"Mr Riario is not a stalker," Zita insisted, with no small indignation. "His interest in Mr da Vinci is completely justifiable."

Leo recovered quickly from the revelation. "Of course," he said lightly. _If not entirely professional, by the sound of it. Not forgetting he must have broken some copyright law with that print.._. "Whose wouldn't be?"

"Leo –!"

"I intend to get to know him just as well," he interrupted.

 _Phlegethon_ had been his favourite? Because of the link to Dante's work, he wondered? It wasn't the only piece Leo had done in connection with Christian or Catholic mythos, and he'd done it thinking of the original Greek myth, not the interpretation in the Inferno. Neither had Leo done a literal interpretation, his Phlegethon had been not a river in the underworld, but a man – and it had a meaning to him that he'd rather not have thought about there and then. That Riario should have focussed on that particular work…

Zo dropped his head into his hands. Leo heard him groan a muffled 'fuck's sake', before he looked up again.

He knew that look.

"Leo. I know by now I'll be indulging you putting yourself in danger for the rest of whichever one of us' luck runs out first's life. But them?" he nodded towards Lucrezia and Amelia. "That's really pushing it. I mean, really."

'Pushing it', as Zo called it had almost ended their friendship once before; again in regards to the Pazzi situation when Andrea, Nico and Vanessa had also all almost been killed. Even when they had survived, the only reason Zo had forgiven Leo had been because it transpired those fucks had been planning on killing the then-pregnant Vanessa anyway, removing any obstacles to their seizing Medici assets – as Leo had correctly guessed beforehand.

Whether he would have still involved her in his machinations otherwise… the answer was probably 'yes', and they probably both knew it, but they'd been friends too long for Zo not to take the excuse to forgive him. Whether he'd be that lucky a second time… that he truly didn't know.

However, for now he was only 'pushing it'. And he wouldn't have been Leonardo da Vinci if he hadn't tried to get as close to a mile out of the inch that was on offer as he could.

"I know," he said. "I trust you to pull me back if you need to. Let's hope Granny has a nice, quiet party tonight."

"Mr Riario has told me things about his grandmother," Zita informed them gravely.

Her eyes much deeper in their focus on him now, and Leo wondered if this wasn't one of those situations planned and perpetrated from beyond the grave by someone too bad for their evil to be contained by death.

A group of tangled puppets swaying in the tempest. And indeed, Zita said,

"I don't think you will find much quiet from her or hers."

 

 

*~*~*

 


	5. Microcosm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honour of the birth/death-day of the writer whose works inspired Leo's choice of name for Riario's alter in this fic, here's another chapter, in which most of the discussion focuses around a completely different writer. 
> 
> This chapter also marks what is (hopefully) the halfway point, next time Leo will begin his offensive, and once you get to the end of this chapter you'll know what I mean by that. Leo's plans are THE BEST, don't worry.
> 
> Thank you for all comments and kudos!

 

*~*~*

 

Dinner was, however, a comparatively uneventful affair in the end. Alessandro had had enough good sense to make sure Riario was drugged unconscious the whole way through.

That he had not only been put into a straitjacket, but strapped in further to the chair he'd been wheeled in on, his sleeping face muzzled and blindfolded by a metal attachment complete with protruding adjustment screws that kept his head in one place like something out of a horror movie, that had made things a little awkward though.

It spoke volumes that Francesco, by then the only member of the family who shouldn't have expected this sight (or anything like it), only raised his eyebrows when he was brought in and the lawyer, Mercuri, recovered after mere moments of open-mouthed shock.

"For his health," Alessandro had barked, with a shrug. "Can't have him thrashing about and whatnot."

"Well, of course," Leo had said, nodding. "Makes perfect sense, medically speaking. Hey, Amelia – I know you don't get to see your sister as often as you'd like, shall we swap places?"

Amelia had been almost trembling as she'd got up from the table where Riario had been sat next to her, and Leo had patted her shoulder in solidarity firmly when they'd passed.

He'd kept a close eye on Riario for the entirety of the dinner, remembering what he'd overheard Zita saying the night before about his increasing resistance to sedation, and worried she may have been ordered to use something stronger than was sensible for the occasion. Several times he'd caught sight of her hovering in the doorway to the kitchen, peering in anxiously, but Riario's breathing remained thankfully steady throughout.

The rest had just been listening to the lawyer drone on, reminding them of the entirely unnecessarily complex terms of the will. It seemed there were rather a lot of clauses outside the compulsory birthday parties that the old witch had dreamt up – and Leo felt justified in calling the woman that because of the clauses. Most of them were random-sounding nonsense, and different for Lucrezia and Riario respectively, who were mentioned by name often.

Any male heirs of Lucrezia's were cut out of the will entirely, whether they had her name or not, and the same went for any children of Riario's born outside of wedlock, male or female, but not for his male heirs born within wedlock provided they took their mother's name and they, she, and Riario all remained members of the Roman Catholic Church. Lucrezia by contrast did not have to affiliate herself with any religion, but was prohibited from marrying a Freemason. Leo preferred not to speculate on what Grandma had been thinking of when she'd included that; it was one of those words that raised alarm bells.

A further clause stated that if Lucrezia and Riario decided to marry _each other_ , no money would be released until both of the twins were dead – assuming all other caveats were followed. It had been difficult after hearing that part to pay strict attention to the clarifications that followed – yes, that meant Lucrezia had to be RCC and yes, that meant Riario's sons by her could not inherit – when it seemed so utterly absurd that the woman would have thought this was something her grandchildren might want to do. What a complete _whackjob_.

Mercuri was just finishing up talking about how a share in the money would be released to either of the twins' firms should the caveats of the will have been followed but the money denied to the respective heir due to national law, which Leo was going to have to ask Nico about when he got the chance, along with half the other legalese he was being fed, when the clock chimed eight, and Zita reappeared with a candle-lit tiramisu.

If Leo had believed there was a god, he would have thanked him on bended knee that old Granny hadn't included the condition that they all had to sing 'Happy Birthday'.

"And so," Mercuri announced, taking the lid off a fountain pen, "I can now confirm that the following inheritors; Miss Lucrezia Donati, Miss Amelia Donati, and Mr Girolamo Riario, remain qualified for said inheritance for the next two years from today's date, or until the death of either Mr Francesco della Rovere or Mr Alessandro della Rovere, whichever should come first. Sign here please."

_If there was a god, he'd strike them both down where they sit_ , thought Leo, as Mercuri passed a form to Lucrezia and pointed to a line on the paper. Leo could see even from where he was that there were far more than three lines there, and indeed, Mercuri then proceeded to list the names of other cousins of Lucrezia's who were disqualified from the will, while Amelia also signed her name and Alessandro signed on behalf of Riario.

"Well," said Leo, clapping his hands together. "Wasn't that jolly good fun. Early night, girls?"

"Oh, you don't want to stay up for Monopoly?" asked Francesco jovially. "It's something of a tradition, if not in my mother's will."

"Nah." Leo grinned with faux-innocence. "Games are never fun for anyone else when I'm one of the players. You two have a good night though, I hope Riario's feeling better in the morning."

Alessandro harrumphed dismissively, but there was a slight narrowness to Francesco's look that hadn't been there a moment before. That made Leo pause a little, because Francesco was the tricky one, and he was almost certain the man had caught the implied challenge in the 'game' remark.

But he put his arm around Lucrezia's shoulders, grinning like an idiot as he herded her from the room. Amelia followed close behind, and when Leo looked back over his shoulder at her he couldn't see whether or not Zita was also lurking nearby.

He checked back behind himself again to make sure the door closed behind them, as if his whisper to Lucrezia would have been easier for either of the twins to hear had they been able to see him.

"New plan," he told her. "Might involve some risk on our part, but I think it's the way to go. Did you keep the lawyer's card?"

"Lupo?" she asked. They turned the corner, but she too checked behind them anyway. "He hates the whole family. Used to be friends with my Dad until he got roped into this whole thing and now he only comes here because he can't get out of the contract – I doubt he'd do us any favours."

"Depends on the favour. But I'll need to look him up anyway. Is eleven the earliest bus that leaves tomorrow?"

Lucrezia grimaced. "On a Saturday? Unfortunately."

"Let's see if we can get away before then and stay in the town for a bit – I want Thing One and Thing Two thinking we want as little to do with them and all this as possible."

"Thinking?"

She stopped behind him, just as they'd reached the foot of the stairs. Leo also came to a brief halt, but saw through the glass front the Swiss guard he'd pegged as the senior most among Alessandro's henchmen and decided to keep moving from there. Lucrezia must have seen him too, because she followed, but he caught familiar annoyance and foreboding on her face before he turned back around.

"Yep, thinking," he said, hurrying up the stairs. Two of the other guards had been in the dining hall which left one more unaccounted for, but he didn't seem to be in the vicinity.

Furthermore, while Leo was certain the phones were tapped, he was also proceeding on the assumption that there were no bugs elsewhere in the house – otherwise the guards would have found Riario easily the night before.

Speaking of whom…

"What about Girolamo?" Amelia asked.

Leo took a deep breath. It was always a wretch to have to admit there were things even he couldn't solve overnight.

"I don't think we can get to him in the time we have," he said. "And I need some space to conduct my own research so I can have the upper hand on my return."

Much as it worried him to leave things with Riario or Caliban simply as they were there was little option but to hope for the best until he could wrangle another sabbatical out of Lorenzo.

"Return to what?" Lucrezia hissed at him. "What are you planning, Leo? I told you getting involved with my cousin was a bad idea, but if you're thinking of getting involved with the twins – "

" 'getting involved with' isn't exactly how I'd put it," Leo said. " 'destroying utterly' might be a more apt term, or 'smiting' if we wanted to be biblical about it. Ironically I do feel like being biblical round about now…"

"Leo!"

Reaching the top of the stairs he turned down towards the library and did not answer Lucrezia's incredulous voicing of his name before they were all three of them safely inside. He closed the door behind himself and leant against it with a sigh. Lucrezia looked furious – probably more from built-up frustration than from just this one instance of him being himself – but he couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes tactlessly.

"Think, Lucrezia. This is way beyond you and your sister – Alessandro's a monster and I'm sure if I dug a few inches beneath the surface of your dad's company I'd find as many lives he's ruined. We can't just sneak away and leave who knows how many people to their own problems."

Now, Leo couldn't say he was surprised to see Lucrezia's eyes go dark there. He'd seen those eyes go dark towards him before, and that had been swiftly followed by the moment that, in retrospect, had been the moment their previous relationship had become unsalvageable.

And what was happening now was tantamount to re-confirmation of what he understood to have led to that particular shipwreck. That he could not allow her to occupy one hundred percent of his attention.

"I knew it," she said, with a bitter laugh. "I knew this would happen. I was so relieved when you said you'd come with me, and even though I thought it was too good to be true when you said you'd find a way to stop these stupid gatherings I actually started to hope… but something like that is never going to be enough for you. You always have to go one step further, and what happens when there's always another step, Leonardo?"

He knew what happened. Andrea had said so time and time again.

"Lu-Lu," said Amelia; questioning – uncertain. They were going to have to tell her eventually that they'd broken up, but meeting her in person Leo could understand even better why it was so hard for Lucrezia to upset her.

Lucrezia only ignored her now, eyes fixed on Leo's.

"What happens is that nothing you start is ever finished. And who's going to be left to pick up the ball when you get bored and—"

"It's not the same when there are other people involved," he interrupted her. "Especially people I care about – come on, Lucrezia you know I've pulled this off before!"

"You mean with the Pazzi?" Lucrezia asked. "They're nothing compared to my father and his brother and you know it."

"And they were nothing for me too!"

"How can you say that when half your friends almost died—"

"It's not the same when they're not the ones under attack. This time I'll be working on the offensive, Lucrezia, I _need_ you to trust me."

The library seemed so much smaller then, like it was shrinking in around him. How very much like Zo Lucrezia was, when she fought with herself between giving Leo that trust out of respect for their relationship, and reminding herself that however well he meant, involving oneself with Leo's plans was still not the safest place to be. That look in her eyes was just the same as what he'd seen in his.

And like with Zo, the former was what won out for now, but he was pushing it, and while the idea of those two 'united' had admittedly perturbed him, it was nothing compared to the fear that it engendered when he imagined them united _against him_.

Lucrezia shook her head.

"I do trust you," she said after what felt like a long time. "God help me. Because I feel like I shouldn't. You're over-confident. And I don't like this interest you seem to have in my cousin; he's dangerous, Leo I know I've said it again and again, but if I have to keep saying it until it gets through your thick skull, I will."

'I do trust you', she'd said, and he could live with that despite the caveat. He took a deep breath.

Already, he'd dismissed her concern about Riario, and it didn't even bother him that he'd done so.

 

*~*~*

 

Gazing up that night at the bare white walls of his room, fully clothed on top of his bedcovers, Leo was restless. He sincerely doubted he'd get to sleep at all; not just out of worry or wanting to be aware in case anyone tried anything, but also just to think through the situation. Also, just in case _they_ broke out again.

That he was actually hoping for such a thing to happen made him the kind of person that infuriated others, he knew that. It was dangerous. But how boring would it be to be safe, he wondered?

He was going to have to make some compromises, obviously. Approaching the situation mostly blind, even for the great Leonardo da Vinci, would have been moronic. He needed to know more about the people he'd be going up against, and their respective companies, and he needed a deeper understanding of old granny's will – maybe of the woman herself too.

Riario was going to be tricky, not just in how Caliban might cause mayhem or the host be trapped by misplaced loyalty, but in regards to what the end goal for him was – because of what he'd done, and his current mental state, and because of how those two things were as much in conflict as the alters.

Meaning firstly, that with the dissociation being recent, Leo could not acquit either Riario or Caliban (if treating them as two separate entities was the best option, and for now it was the one he was going with in order to give the biggest benefit of the doubt) of the deaths they had undoubtedly caused. In fact if anything Caliban was the more innocent of the two, having failed to fully realise his attempted murder.

The point was that he deserved punishment, perhaps the same punishment as his father for those deaths.

Secondly though there was the fact that he was insane, and from an ethical standpoint required protection as well. Sure, institutions for people who fell into both these categories existed, but Leo couldn't bring him to one until whatever plan he was going to come up with came to fruition.

So he ran the risk of simultaneously allying himself with a murderer, and screwing with a mentally ill person; depending on what his plan to destroy the twins was going to entail.

And he had a feeling, like half a vision of a puzzle he'd yet to put together was staring him from the many pieces, that it was going to end up something like that.

"Shit," he muttered out loud to himself. A moment later he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

He needed to focus. He couldn't think properly in this horrible blank room, nor with no way to project his thoughts into reality – to see them with his own eyes outside his mind. He grabbed his bag from the side of the wardrobe and retrieved some of his essential travelling tools – a paintbrush and a bottle of good black ink. That was what he needed.

It would take him less time to make something liveable of the small balcony area than the room, he decided quickly, and rummaged around for his small ottlite torch. Tossing aside the adult colouring book that was in the same compartment – no prizes for guessing who'd put that there in an attempt at a joke – he retrieved the little light only to find its battery practically dead, and no prizes for guessing who'd drained that last time they'd been enjoying the rural beauty of the (another) land, stumbling around in the dark piss-drunk. He _knew_ he'd forgotten to do something before they'd left…

Oh well. The moon was bright enough. Designs by moonlight, that had its own kind of art to it when he thought about it.

There were lights in the garden as well that hadn't been on the previous night. Perhaps a precautionary measure from the guards, somehow? Did Caliban dislike light? Or was it just that he liked to hide in dark places? Or was it Riario who'd taken them under the bed the night before? – it had been him Leo had talked to first.

Maybe it was just supposed to make it easier to spot and shoot intruders; though he had to say he didn't see anyone out there, not even at the main entrance where he'd seen the one guard the night before, and he had a view of that entrance from where he was so he should have seen…

Anyway, the upshot of that was he had the opportunity to rectify the ugliness of the building somewhat. He knelt down on the right side facing the door and dipped his brush into the ink pot.

The first thing that came to mind, for whatever reason, was a wasp. He didn't know what to interpret his subconscious' suggestion of that as, he just went with it – _Pseudomasaris coquiletti_ : a striped species, curved and elegant. Leonardo sketched a three-foot outline in charcoal within a few minutes, and tried to contemplate the situation at hand when he moved on to the ink.

More problems were going to arise from the fact he had to take down both the twins at once. Alessandro was going to be the easier of the two, his crimes were blatant enough and destroying Crossgate would only be a matter of persuading the right person to do the right thing; Leo held out hope that person would be Riario, but he'd probably need someone else in power too.

However, Francesco was certainly intelligent enough to realise that if Leo brought down Crossgate he'd almost certainly have his eye on Rovere Industries as well, and take swift measures to disentangle himself from anything incriminating, if indeed he hadn't been intelligent enough to avoid that altogether.

Leo hadn't brought it up with Lucrezia before, because he'd known what her reaction would be, but he was leaning towards thinking they were going to have to bring Lorenzo in on this one, and that was a whole other world of bad business.

Still, he could usually convince Lorenzo to be sensible. And occasionally to be rather un-sensible. Only, then Giuliano would have to get involved too, and love him as Leo did for Vanessa's sake, he was a bloody bull in a china shop on these issues.

But thinking about the differences between those two brothers brought another matter to mind, whether or not he should have tried to play one twin against the other. There was certainly a truckload of resentment and contempt between the two, but Leo didn't know if he'd have called it hatred because he also saw odd moments of unity between them also. If he tried to divide them, wasn't he risking the possibility that it would push them to unite?

He could not concentrate.

And he imagined that was for the best, because had he been any further entranced by his thoughts he would not have heard the tell-tale click from the door within that told him someone had come into his room.

His brush halted halfway across the wasp's thorax. Given what had happened the night before, he supposed it had been monumentally stupid of him not to lock that door.

On the other hand, he couldn't deny that his apprehension was drowned out by the excitement of a naturalist catching sight of their subject.

Or perhaps a man, being given a second chance at an encounter with another person he just couldn't seem to get out of his head. Perhaps to Leo the two feelings were more intertwined than most people would have felt comfortable with him feeling.

Perhaps he too had a darkness in him that even the white shadow that had slipped into his room didn't know.

He couldn't tell by leaning his head back around the corner whether it was Riario or Caliban who had entered, but he saw at once it was them, and saw at once the realisation that Leo was not in the bed stop the man in his tracks, and the dejection grow in his posture with short, staccato degrees of movement. Riario, he decided, and not the other – who would have shown his displeasure with more violence.

On a whim, he ducked out of the man's line of sight and brushed a few veins of gossamer wing onto the wall; ears peeled to listen for what Riario would do next. He had only a moment to wonder how he was going to be quiet enough to follow him back out into the mansion when he realised Riario was not backing out, but walking slowly towards the door to the balcony.

Had he seen him? Leo decided to keep painting and wait for Riario's vein of thought to reveal itself. The straitjacket was on him, but with the arms loose, and it was useless to speculate on how except to note that he at least saw no gouts of blood on the white fabric. Thank fuck.

Inside the sewn up long sleeves Riario's hand reached for the door and slid it open, eyes in shadow but still clearly fixed on nothing in particular, which was probably why he didn't see Leo kneeling on his left.

Unfixed, except perhaps on the silvery moon, which looked large tonight, probably due to some atmospheric effect.

Riario seemed drawn to it though, walked forward 'til he reached the railing of the balcony, then looked down at the garden, and the cherry blossom tree that almost seemed to glow under light of the night sky.

A sudden muse for yet another portrait struck Leo with enough force that he was almost too late to recognise the warning signs, as both sleeved arms came to rest on that rail, then applied more body weight, like Riario was going to…

"A bit drastic, don't you think?" Leo asked him, heart suddenly racing. Riario froze. "Even for someone as amazing as me. For all you know I could have just gone to the bathroom."

He saw the smile appear on the other man's face before he finally had another glimpse of those deep, beautiful dark eyes. To his relief Riario put his weight back on his feet before meeting his gaze.

"It might have been better for you if you had, da Vinci," he whispered. Then his beautiful eyes glanced off Leo's and onto the wall behind him. "Rather than committing petty vandalism. I fear my father will be most unhappy."

Leo scoffed. "This building in itself is vandalism of the beautiful natural landscape," he declared. "Can't do much about the architecture, but I can at least make it look a little less like a mental asylum."

"Ah, but I thought we'd agreed the mental asylum-look was appropriate."

"Nope. The last thing you need is to be put in an _ugly_ asylum. No wonder you were about to throw yourself over the edge."

Though he said it casually in truth he was kicking himself, more than kicking himself if there was such a term for that. This is what he got for treating people like projects, a narrowly averted tumble off a ledge when he could have just said 'hi' as soon as Riario had walked in through the door. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why was he being so stupid with this one?

Riario only chuckled a little though, turned his back on the railing and leant against it.

"Well, I can't say it was top of my list of reasons, but I'm sure it didn't help."

"And what was top of your list?" Leo asked bluntly, shading a stripe. "That most unhappy father of yours?"

He looked quickly for Riario's reaction, but he was only smiling, now with a far-off look.

"No," he said. "Father has been very patient with me. He has done all he can – I cannot blame him. I realise…"

It was a chore to hold himself back from saying 'what?' or trotting out a list of reasons Riario could indeed blame his father. But Leo waited.

"I realise," Riario continued, "that I do not have it in me to obtain 'salvation', the only salvation that matters, and must content myself to 'salvage', thereby attaining grace in losing, if not in anything else."

The paintbrush stilled against the wall.

"Meaning…?" Leo asked, though he could guess well enough what it meant.

Riario met his eyes again. "Tell me, Artista, you said you hold particular admiration for the Renaissance masters; how well-versed are you in respect to medieval Italian poetry?"

Now Leo was rolling his own eyes, as he turned them back to the wall. "I have a sneaking suspicion the name 'Dante' is about to leave your mouth." He remembered Zita's assertion that Riario had loved Phlegethon best of all his paintings, and knew well enough of the connection.

"You don't care for Florence's premier poet?"

"I wouldn't call him Florence's premier poet," Leo told him. "That one goes to Petrarch. As for Dante, the _Divine Comedy_ espouses an ideology I find both distasteful and internally inconsistent." He waved his brush a little. "If also containing some admittedly inspiring imagery. But I can't say I'm a fan of the extended revenge-fantasy where everyone Dante doesn't like ends up being tortured forever and ever."

"Compassionate of you," Riario told him. A slight breeze shook a few strands of his hair. "As Dante's own version of himself is, towards those he sees suffering eternal torment at points during that part. But as Virgil tells him in response, the suffering is deserved and so it is a good thing that they should suffer, and so it will be for me. Better that my offences are curtailed quickly, so that, 'all manner of things shall be well' all the sooner, as was promised. I don't find that distasteful or inconsistent."

"You think Dante's depiction of himself is accurate?" Leo asked. "When he's the one who has created the world his written self is so horrified by?"

"But the _Divine Comedy_ features Dante's depiction of his younger self," said Riario. "At a time when perhaps the woes of the world had not worn his capacity for hope or compassion down so much." He tilted his head. "I've noticed there is considerable difference between your current writings and some of your own earlier works. And you are even younger now than the Dante of the Divine Comedy was, let alone the Dante who wrote it."

So Riario had gone that far down into his personal life, had he? He supposed it would have just made sense to assume he'd seen anything Leo had ever shown to the public, and anything else it would have been easy enough to find out as well.

As to the observation, Leo found himself turning back to shade the wasp's dark and glassy eyes.

"Some things can't be intuited," he said. "Or even taught, however much a person tries to teach you. They can only be experienced."

A smile that was somehow predatory appeared on Riario's face; for a moment Leo wondered if Caliban had suddenly swooped in and taken over. Yet his much harsher voice wasn't the voice Leo heard say –

"Might those words not refer to one Professor Alrahim?"

Well. At least Leo's resolution of two seconds ago had had him prepared to hear that name.

Riario continued, "At what point, da Vinci, did you realise that getting involved with a radical Islamist really _was_ a bad idea, and not just unfairly demonised by the terrible right-wing capitalist establishment?"

Leo sighed. "I'm not an anti-capitalist," he muttered. "I think my employer might have been put off otherwise. Well, more put off than he usually gets. And Alrahim isn't a radical Islamist, he's just good at manipulating them to carry out violent acts in the name of their philosophy, that happen to also advance his. It was no accident that the Munich bombers successfully hit the corporate headquarters of that target, but _accidentally_ – " he mimed quotation marks with the fingers of his left hand while his right painted, " – blew themselves up on their way to attack the inter-faith cooperation rally. That was Alrahim, all of it, but then I get the feeling you already knew that."

"Mm. Did the authorities never realise that you had designed the bombs, or was it just hushed up?"

Now that, that was something that had neither become public, nor been easy enough to realise just by looking at the facts that Leo could have been prepared to hear the fact said aloud by a stranger. That was something very few people knew about, unless Alrahim himself had been telling stories about the designs he'd stolen, so how Riario had known…

"I suppose since I've never seen any other explosives designed by you, and believe me, I've looked, they wouldn't have had any reason to recognise the artist. But I know your other work. And I recognised it."

"Very intuitive of you," Leo told him. He believed him, because he had been concerned about that very thing ever since the attacks. "I have to wonder though, is there a reason you brought up my old mentor," much as it left a sour taste in his mouth these days to call Alrahim that, "or did you just want to see the look on my face?"

Riario chuckled. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just always thought… was he your inspiration for Phlegethon?"

And that… that was the kind of thing that made his heart flutter. Because Leo had left clues in that painting for sure, but up 'til now, only Andrea hadn't asked 'what's this supposed to be?' when he'd unveiled it to them. Sure, none of his other friends were artists, but he couldn't help feeling that they shouldn't have needed to be able to paint themselves in order to understand.

Weren't they his friends, after all? The people who knew him best?

But then, Andrea had always said _'knowing and understanding are not the same thing!_ ', often with no small amount of desperation. Like how knowing the enemies of your enemies were not always your friends didn't mean you understood it until those people actually screwed you over.

He thought of Phlegethon as he'd drawn it, the figure looking nothing like Alrahim, of course, at least not so far as physical similarities went: he'd torn up several first attempts before he'd got the expression right on his own typical corporate three-piece suit (that 'corporate' part painted out of spite rather than insight, he had to admit).

That figure held a light like a small sun up to a younger, scruffier-looking young woman, and the papers the two of them were holding up together. Yet on the same pavilion, imagined in the Greco-Roman style like the art of old, a trail of other nonetheless modern-dressed figures had been left in 'Phlegethon's wake, staring dumbfounded as their own works were burnt up and turned to ash by his illumination.

"The river of fire," he muttered. "And all the critics just said, 'oh look, da Vinci still can't let go of his daddy issues, ha ha ha'."

"They only know how to read along lines travelled a million times before," agreed Riario. " 'Now, what do you think this long, hard object represents, class?' "

Leo snorted.

"Oh there were a few phallic objects in that painting," he said, "To symbolise that fact that Alrahim's a prick. I wonder why you made the connection though, to that work in particular?" he said, the words coming out even as the thought began to bloom. "Do you feel like someone you put your trust in betrayed you too, made you complicit in their crimes?"

Riario did not rise to this bait.

"I was rather thinking of the border of the seventh circle Phlegethon runs by, and the Minotaur who guards it." His voice lowered to a mutter. "The shadow at the centre of the Labyrinth…"

" _'And when he saw us there he bit himself; as though flailed flat within by utter rage'_? Not what I had in mind, so I suppose that's more how you see yourself. Interesting."

"Is it?"

"Well, that's how I see Caliban, not you. You, I think, gave me a better estimation of yourself the first time we met."

An uncertain smile forced its way onto Riario's face. "I don’t always remember…"

" _'Four grey walls and four grey towers; overlook a space of flowers; and the silent isle imbowers_ …"

"… _the Lady of Shalott_." He smiled more genuinely now. "I would have thought Tennyson a bit too lukewarm for your tastes."

"There's value in moderation," Leo allowed. "Not what I value, so much, but he has his moments. I would consider you perhaps… a modern reimagining of the poem's subject."

"Quite. I suppose listing all the differences between us would be a waste of time."

"It's the similarities that interest me," Leo said, nodding. "I don't know if you've seen your 'brave knight and true' from your tower window, but I think your curse has come upon you, only you're not dead."

"Yes. I was about to attempt to rectify that before my 'curse' spreads far enough to drag others down into the icy depths."

Leo's brush paused on the wall.

"Now, that's what we call taking allegory a step too far, Ariel."

"And yet it would solve your problem as well as mine," Riario said. "My father would have no way to access the will money, my uncle would no longer care if his daughters chose to refuse the inheritance."

In fact, Leo had not thought of that. Possibly because he didn't generally go for bumping someone off as a first resort, whether by actively doing them in or by passively painting insects while they killed themselves. But it wasn't like you couldn't fault the logic.

"True. Unfortunately the problem isn't limited to the parties, the family will still be family when the will is no longer an issue, and I get the feeling a certain someone might be a sore loser. Anyway, what would happen to Zita if you were dead?"

"… don't ask me that."

"What would happen to Caliban, for that matter?" the seriousness of the whole convincing-someone-not-to-kill-themselves situation apparently didn't exclude him from going off on a tangent. "How do you see that anyway, I wonder? I mean, do you and Caliban share a soul? Are there two souls in the same body? That doesn't sound like it would mesh well with Catholic metaphysics. Unless Caliban is a case of demonic possession."

He was relieved when Riario snorted on hearing that, if in a despairing way.

"I know what you call 'Caliban' is not a demon," Riario said. "Simpler though it would have been if he was. As for what he thinks of me ridding the world of our presence, I can't say I really care all that much. One does not ask a wolf for his opinion when one sets the dogs on it to protect the flock."

"Says you," Leo returned. "I happen to be one of those bleeding heart wildlife conservationists, in addition to my many other sins, so I just might do a thing like that."

There was a pause. The glint of light on the wasp's stinger only needed to be outlined, and the picture was done. Leo asked,

"If I were to ask to speak to him instead of you, could you change at will?"

It was the wrong thing entirely to ask.

Or no, that wasn't it. It was only that Riario had been waiting for the painting of the wasp to be finished, the calligraphic touch of species binomial sufficing for a title, before he shifted to do what he'd been planning when he'd walked onto that balcony.

Probably what he'd been planning even before that. Had Leo not looked quickly back to Riario to gage his estimation rather than taking the moment to admire his own work, he would have missed the tilt backwards against the flow of the midsummer night winds.

"Shit."

How he moved so fast, he'd never know; for a moment everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He leapt up towards the balcony rail, paintbrush flung to the side as both hands shot out; one to grab onto the iron frame, the other to close a fist around the front of the straitjacket and hold Riario back from falling back onto the garden path.

But even though he'd been lugging him around only the night before Leo was unprepared for how much force there was in his slighter-seeming build; he only had a second or two to straddle the other man's waist and push the weight of his own body against the railing with the tops of his thighs to anchor himself in place enough that he felt (relatively) safe in letting go of the railing for a better grip on Riario.

With the pushback from slamming against the rails, Leo pitched forward even further for a split-second, leaving him with the horrible feeling that he was about to tumble over the edge. Even as he recovered his position was precarious, and he felt the onset of vertigo begin before he pushed it down and returned his attention to Riario.

The expression on the other man's face was shocked; confused even, like he was surprised to see Leo there at all, let alone for him to have stopped him from throwing himself off a balcony. He glanced around himself some more as if for answers to questions Leo couldn't fathom in his current state. It was no small task to hold him up.

"Come on," he choked out. "Don't run away from me just yet."

"Da Vinci…?" said Riario, and a split-second before Leo clocked that the switch may indeed have gone off now, he blinked and the expression on his face changed to piercing scrutiny. "You're holding me over a ledge? Bad luck, you scared the fucking worm away, but you don't frighten _me._ "

"Caliban?"

"Surprise."

The alter grinned. Then to Leo's amazement, it was as Zita had suggested – already, and even under the softness of moonlight, Leo could see tears well in the eyes he stared into. Psychosomatic, it had to be, and yet why…

…was not the thought most appropriate for this particular moment.

"I think you'll find I'm holding you up, not over," Leo said, now breathing heavily from the exertion. "Our friend Ariel was about to try his hand at a little impromptu aviation."

If Leo would have been worried Caliban wouldn't believe him had he had the time to worry about such things, he would have been wrong. It took the other only a moment to process what he'd been told, and then Leo saw the fury begin to rise up faster than the tears.

" _Reprobate_ ," Caliban hissed. "That fucking coward! After all I've done for him."

His arms that had been hanging limply shot up to try and catch the railing, and finally he shifted his weight so that it was working with Leo in pushing them both back up onto the balcony, cursing as he went.

"If he thinks anything can redeem his rotten shitstain soul, let alone killing me to save that useless fuck he keeps us tethered to, he's even more of a lunatic than everyone already thinks – the fucking worthless cunt – "

The final push backwards for Leo sent him right into the wall left of the balcony door with a grunt that became a sigh of relief as his legs gave out and he and Caliban both sank to the floor. While Leo panted, Caliban had fallen forward against his chest, the buckle from one of his jacket straps digging into the flesh on Leo's left side before he – seemingly unfazed – slowly lifted his head up and pulled back.

Leo wished he had an outside view there, of the way Caliban looked at him, trying to decide whether to trust him or not – at the angles of both their limbs and the expression on his own face. He had a feeling yet another painting would have sprung from it.

At the same time, he saw the experienced killer practically sitting in his lap and despite his earlier instinct he could hear Zo's voice in his head. _'You know the old story, Leo. The fox gives the scorpion a lift across the river, but when the scorpion stings him halfway over and the fox points out they'll both drown, the only answer the scorpion has is that it's just the way he is – his nature_?'

Ironically, he'd been talking about Lucrezia then. How times changed.

Eventually Caliban found something else to say.

"You saved my life, da Vinci," he said, like he was pleasantly surprised about that – as Leo himself was, if perhaps not with the same mindset. "Or maybe you just wanted an excuse to press yourself up against me like the fucking pervert you are. Either way, I'll tell you a secret."

Much as Leo took offence to the insinuation, he passed it off with an eye-roll in order to learn this 'secret'.

And he very much doubted Caliban was actually upset by the thought that another man might find him attractive, because he leant deliberately forward again to whisper in Leo's ear…

"I can only assume you haven't realised it yet," he said. "The worm doesn't remember what happens when I'm awake, and sorting out the fucking messes he's created."

Leo could see him grin again, the twitch made by one corner of his mouth on his cheek out of the furthest corner of his eye.

"But I remember almost all of what he does. What he says." He came back again to look Leo in the eye. "And what's said to him. Like, _'I won't not call you by your name'_."

Shit.

"You filthy liar."

A smart man might have immediately made the move to restrain Caliban's arms.

But Leo was much smarter than 'a smart man'; backed up against the wall he knew he'd have nowhere to go if Caliban decided to pitch forward and try to go for his throat. It was a move he would have put past most people, but not Caliban.

So he let Caliban get a hit in, a brutal one, that snapped his head back and bounced off against that wall with a blast of searing pain that was definitely going to leave at least one mark beneath his hair – even muted by the long sleeves covering that right hook.

This capitulation threw Caliban off for the moment, made him question. He obviously hadn't come to a conclusion though he moved to hit again, but Leo also knew he couldn't let him get away with the same move twice, caught the man's wrist in his left hand firmly and put it back down. It was surprisingly easy, and he had the feeling that was because Caliban had chosen to make it that way, and not because he was weak from his illness, though he did look it.

Leo raised his eyebrows.

"Would you employ the same tactics to analyse two different alters, if you were me?" he asked.

The alter before him was almost childish, the way he clicked his tongue at that.

"Well," he said, annoyed, "I suppose I can't call you a manipulative cunt without risking someone making a comment about colours and kitchenware."

Pots and kettles, he meant.

"Oh, but Ariel is the manipulative one, isn't he?" Leo pointed out. "You prefer to say it the way you see it."

Sadly, he now saw the truth in this, as Lucrezia had warned him. Knowing and understanding, yet again. He realised just as fast that if that was what Riario was like when in a severely unbalanced state of mind, then he was going to be much more difficult to deal with if he managed to recover somewhat.

Not from his dissociation, of course. People generally didn't recover from things like that. But for the host persona to achieve some kind of stability – that was not impossible, except that in this case, with Alessandro to consider, he had his doubts.

Either way, he could see now that neither alter was going to make this especially easy.

And conversely, neither of them was without starting points for Leo to take advantage of.

Meanwhile, Caliban clapped his sleeved hands together slowly. "That was what I'd been trying to tell you, Artista. See? Don't you think I'm the one you should save?"

"You think I'm here to erase one or the other of you?"

"You probably thought your 'Princess' would be easier to handle, didn't you?" said Caliban, and then he leaned close again. "But I can make it worth your while in ways he wouldn't…"

Like he knew what he was doing, he shifted his hips against Leo's – twice over to reiterate his point. Leo cursed the part of his that instantly went 'yes, brilliant idea!' (one could probably guess which) and reached out for the other man's hips: to still them, and not to encourage him. He liked to think he kept his composure throughout.

Then he smiled. "It doesn't work like that, and you know it. Besides, I have much bigger plans than pertain to you alone."

Caliban frowned. "What plans?"

"Hm… how did you put it again? Take down your father's company and bring him to justice for all the very bad things he's done? Something like that. Oh, and your uncle too for that matter."

There was a little thrill that came from Caliban's stunned expression then, though even in the warmth of the Tuscan summer, he felt colder as the other pulled back from him.

"Better men that you have tried," he said, first searching, then with a chuckle.

Leo saw that laugh threaten to expand into the hysterics he'd seen Caliban devolve into the night before, and so he grabbed his shoulders harshly, and looked straight at his reddened eyes.

"What do you mean by 'better men than me'?" he asked.

For a moment Caliban was incredulous, but then he smiled again and said, "Touché," as Leo suddenly leant in close to him as he had done before.

"I have big plans for the whole happy family, Caliban. What do you say to working with me on that?"

"I'd prefer to keep myself HIV-free, for the time being," said Caliban mockingly, and Leo rolled his eyes again. "But you can rest assured I'll make sure your beloved Ariel doesn't try to make quietus with a bare bodkin for a few months. I'd like to know, da Vinci, if you still want to break the 'Lady's curse once you've had the opportunity to dig up as much on us as we have about you."

That was a question Leo was afraid he might already know the answer to. It was always different imagining something and actually seeing it for yourself. But Leo had a very good imagination.

"Call me Leo," he said, lightly. "All my friends do."

"Friends?" Caliban repeated, incredulous to the point of laughter again. "Don't you rather think I might be 'demonic possession'? Your 'Lady' pretends he doesn't, but the thought still lurks in the dark at the back of his mind."

If only. No, it was much worse than that, Leo realised, thinking back to when Lucrezia had looked into his eyes and said, _'don't you believe in love at first sight?'_. He hadn't, and he didn't, and yet this was a fascination he was feeling so intensely, so irrationally, that it was very much like love indeed.

"I don't believe in demons," he said.

He took the chance of turning his back to collect his paintbrush, and Caliban did not take advantage and attack. Instead, when Leo returned to his earlier spot on the wall and drew out the binomial _'Limenitus archippus'_ in preparation for the next work, he glanced back to find Caliban looking pensively at the floor.

"Well," the alter said. "Maybe after a few more meetings with me you will."

 

*~*~*

 

"I suppose there's no chance it will wash off?"

The next morning was cooler than the previous had been; the sky was somewhat overcast, and Leo, the girls, and their father were at the bottom of the garden path looking up at the house, and the rather noticeable decoration that had been added to the wall since the day before.

"Nope," said Leo cheerfully. "I call it 'Microcosm'. The rain might make it fade a little, but that's life for you."

"I think they're beautiful," said Amelia, eyes practically glowing with sincerity. "You should come back and paint them over the whole house!"

Leo chuckled. There were seven drawings up there in all; _Pseudomasaris coquiletti_ and _Limenitus archippus_ the viceroy were beneath _Sphex pensylvanicus_ , the great black wasp; while _Morpho Hecuba_ , the sunset morpho and _Morpho luna_ , the spotless white sat beneath _Lysibia nana_ , the hyperparasitoid, and above the door and sideways on at the head of this bizarre non-family tree was _Megarhyssa macrurus,_ queen of parasites; as anatomically exact as they could be. Adding any more would have defeated the purpose.

"Better than the bare wall anyway," said Francesco. "Well. I'm sorry my brother's not feeling up to wishing you a fond farewell, Leonardo."

Francesco was being sarcastic, but in a weird, dignified way that begged Leo again to like him. If there was one thing he felt he could learn to hate in him even more than in his brother, it was these 'I'm trustworthy!' vibes that Leo could somehow still hear even as he knew the lack of truth behind them.

He grinned though. "Oh, I've no doubt I'll be turning up again after this, now that I've managed to survive the first time."

"Ha ha. We're not that bad really, once you get to know us. I'm more sorry you didn't get to see much of my nephew actually, I think you two would have gotten along."

'You have no idea', Leo might have thought, only he had the horrible feeling that somehow, he did. But he kept his head up and his grin wide.

"Always next time," he said brightly.

"Yes. Now, are you all sure you don't want a lift to the airport? I'm driving straight up to Rome from here, so it would be no trouble."

Leo would have rather travelled back to the airport via pogo stick, if he was being honest.

"Ah, but I promised the girls I'd show them Florence before we dropped Amelia off in old blighty and went back state-side. And there are a few stops I want to make on the way."

"Understandable," said Francesco, amiably. "In a place like Italy, you have to try and see as much as you can." His eyes suddenly locked with Leo's, like a sniper finding a target. "But there's always more out there than you know."

"Don't I know it," said Leo.

Yeah. He knew Leo considered him an enemy. Leo could only hope he wouldn't predict his next move.

A long moment of eye-contact Leo couldn't bear to hurt his pride by breaking away from first and Francesco turned back to his daughters for a fond (or seemingly fond) farewell. It was much less 'seeming', Leo felt, with Amelia as opposed to Lucrezia. Because Francesco thought her easier to control? Because he hadn't seen any less affection towards him from her as opposed to her sister?

Did he have anything like 'love' for her, he wondered.

On instinct Leo looked up while the Donati sisters said their goodbyes; far up, past his 'Microcosm' and up to the top floor of the house, eyes flitting from room to room until he saw, in the window, not Alessandro nor his son but Zita, watching them carefully in semi-darkness.

He couldn't see her expression too well, but he could imagine it, and he nodded to her. She nodded back and vanished into the house, even as Lucrezia turned away from Francesco.

"Shall we?" she asked, slight tremble in her voice as telling as if she'd begged him to leave.

Re-brightening his smile he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.

"We shall. Safe trip, Mr della Rovere."

"And you, Leonardo," said Francesco, before turning back down the other path, towards the garage.

Leo and the girls didn't talk when they walked back to the bus station. Once they were a reasonable distance from the house he dropped his arm, and though she'd made no implication in that vein he guessed she was relieved for it.

They weren't like that anymore, after all, and he accepted it now with far more ease than he had when he'd arrived.

If only he could say that it was a better situation for it.

Absently he ran his fingers over the small swelling on the side of his head, hidden by the hair Caliban had slapped into the wall. He'd had much worse, but still – Zo definitely wasn't going to hear about it. Ahead of him, Amelia and Lucrezia said a few vague words to each other on their way back down to the town. A few petals from that huge cherry blossom tree floated their way down onto their path, and Leo snorted a little when one got caught in Amelia's hair.

And then…

"I see I was worried for fuck all then."

Lucrezia brought her heels together with an angry movement. "Zo, what did I say about speaking like that in front of my sister?"

Amelia snorted. "God, Lu-Lu, I'm nineteen, not nine. Good to see you didn't get murdered in your bed either."

Zo, bless the over-reacting wanker, had dark circles under his eyes, and had met them far further up the path than Leo had advised him to keep his distance from the house the day before.

"No visits from Mr Hyde then?" he asked.

Both girls shook their head, but Leo saw no point in lying about that much at least. He imagined the look on his face said it all.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Leo!"

"Hey, don't look at me like that, he showed up uninvited again." He dismissed Lucrezia's own angry look and gestured down the path with a few flicks of his wrist. There was no way she'd agree with what he was about to propose to Zo; what he had decided upon last night. "Go on ahead, we'll catch up."

To his relief she didn't argue, just shook her head at him in exasperation and herded Amelia away, though she looked like she wanted to stay. He watched them go and knew why she was angry, knew she had every right to be, knew anybody would be and knew it was why their relationship would never have worked out.

He could never have been content with 'anybody'.

"Fuck," said Zo. He too was shaking his head. "What have you gotten us into this time?"

"Don't worry about it," Leo told him. "Everything's going to be fine. I'll make it fine. But we're going to have to be a bit unorthodox about it."

Zo looked at him, like a wary animal who didn't know if the button before him would give him food or an electric shock.

"Leo… what are you thinking?"

… One last look back up at the house was taken…

_And the silent Isle imbowers_ …

…

"Well first, I'm thinking we should kidnap Riario."

A beat of silence later Zo snorted—shaking his head and branching into laughter shortly after.

A beat after that, and Zo looked Leo right in the eyes.

Then he stopped laughing.

 

*~*~*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Note on 'Microcosm':   
> You'd all better be grateful I spent the hour or so I did on Wikipedia choosing which species of wasp to use, for someone like me who has a pronounced fear of buzzy/stinging insects it was like watching a horror movie. Not so much the butterflies, but hey. As you may have guessed, the 'non-family tree' was in fact meant to represent the della Rovere/Donati/Riario happy family as Leo saw it. Their personalities hardly match up /exactly/ to the insects I chose to represent them, nonetheless they were all picked because a line or so in their profiles made me think of the characters in question. Feel free to skip the following ramble, as it is completely pointless.  
> Pseudomasaris coquiletti and Limenitus archippus are the two Riario alters; 'Caliban' being the former - a pollen wasp, which despite being on the surface, a wasp, interacts with the environment more like the much more well-thought of bee, being one of the only wasps to feed its kids a vegetarian diet. The latter is the viceroy butterfly, which I picked for Riario because it was once thought to mimic the monarch butterfly to ward off predators, but was later found to be actually more unpalatable to them than the monarch. Whether Riario will out-unpalate Caliban remains to be seen.  
> The two Morpho species are also butterflies meant to represent the girls; Hecuba for Lucrezia because even though it looks like it wouldn't put up much of a fight it flies strongly, and luna for Amelia because white = purity. By contrast the black wasp is Alessandro; known for drugging its prey and slowly devouring it alive over days or weeks, while Lysibia nana, representing Francesco, hatches its parasitic larva inside other parasitic wasp larva who hatch their larva in pest caterpillars, thus even though they seem to be helping the caterpillars it turns out that's not actually a good thing.  
> Last of all Megarhyssa macrurus is Granny; also a parasitoid, and the wasp with the longest 'ovipositor' of them all, used to stab through the wood of dead tree trunks and infest the larva within, symbolising Granny's long reach, capable of screwing with people even while being long dead. There you have it, you all learned something new. Feel free to spend the rest of the day slacking off! :D


	6. Orpheus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys - it must be a blue moon out there because I'm posting another chapter. In this chapter, Leo's crazy plan begins, I use much artistic license in regards to DID, and innuendo abounds. What else would you expect from this show though, amirite?

 

 

*~*~*

 

FOUR MONTHS LATER

 

 

The stars dwindled, as the sons of man brandished their false lights on Earth ever brighter.

"Will you come in from the cold, Mr Riario? Mr Evans and Mr della Rovere have come to an agreement."

He didn't know why he felt the smile that appeared on his face, when the news made him anything but happy.

"It's only cold if you've known nothing but sub-Saharan Africa for most of your life," he said, turning slowly to meet Zita's eyes as she addressed him from the patio doors. "Mid-land California, even in late October is generally thought of as less than the epitome of inhospitable temperatures."

She smiled. "As you say. Nonetheless, an agreement has been reached. You may be able to make an escape from Mr Evans' gala."

"If I'm not mistaken, Zita, those are the words of someone who's hoping to take advantage of that escape themselves."

"Oh, of course not, Mr Riario." She snorted. "I feel quite at home among the rest of Mr Evans' guests. They are very much my kind of people."

He couldn't help but let out a chuckle, glance back across the near-immaculate lawn (there were some taller clumps of grass around the base of the nearby water feature. Father would never have let a groundskeeper get away with that) of the vast Evans estate and turn back.

 "Ah, yes. Well, I noticed they were very accepting of you. Mr Estringer asked me with quite the knowing look were you my 'partner', and as that is the impression we wished to cultivate I replied that you were, whereupon he congratulated me most firmly with a pat on the back and announced that 'racism was indeed a thing of the past'."

Zita laughed too, even doubling over slightly.

"I'm happy we could end racism together, Mr Riario."

_Nothing ever ends._

"As you say."

He sighed. That it had been Zita who had collected him and not his father, in a rage, spoke to the amount Evans would be paying having been at the very least acceptable to him, if not downright tipped in his favour. Riario had expected nothing less considering the leverage they had over Evans, plus the unexpected circumstances that had resulted in such… unpleasantness, yet where he might have ordinarily been relieved to know his father would not cause an incident, the fear of such a thing had been so low already that its vanquishing left only a whimper behind in place of victorious cry.

Fear was now a muted, half-dead thing that sat more like a swamp seeping into the cracks within him than the ferocious beast it had once been. And that fear, within the holes within him, turned in on itself and whispered evil in almost every waking moment.

Only sometime when he was alone, did it become quiet. He wished he could have said the quiet came with prayer, but prayers were heard by evil things and whether that evil came from within or without it was its nature to punish him for calling on higher powers. No, it was thoughts of a different kind that managed to silence those whispering forces and slow his pulse for a time.

Da Vinci had not come upon his radar since their last, _stimulating_ meeting.

Riario had certainly been keeping watch, how could he not when he was almost certain the Artista had his eye on destroying his father? But from what he could gather, soon after da Vinci's return to New York there had been an incident involving the Neapolitans, and Riario himself had been out of commission for too long following the birthday party to have been able to keep up with whatever feud Lorenzo and Alfonso were duking it out over, or what da Vinci's part in all of it might have been.

He had to make sure the Other stayed in check after all.

"Mr Riario?"

The Other and Riario did not converse, did not so much as leave messages for each other, and he did not remember what happened when he was the Other, and feared that the reverse did not apply. But he had some inkling of the Other's character, and of his goals. He was unnerved that he had been seemingly so quiet.

It was when he went to sleep he felt the most afraid. He hadn't woken up outside his own bed since the birthday party, but he just couldn't be sure…

"Mr Riario?"

The second voicing of his name, perhaps the third or more for all he realised, finally caught his attention. Zita was no longer alone on the threshold of the patio doors, a server stood next to her with two cocktails on a tray.

"Drink before you go, sir?" he asked. He was a stocky man, somewhat shifty-looking with a small moustache.

Zita shrugged and took both of the remaining glasses off the tray.

"They are…?" she asked him.

"Red one's called 'Vermillion Complex'," said the man. "Blue one is 'Orpheus'."

His heart lurched a little as the word seemed to affect Zita; eliciting a sharp intake of breath and widened eyes.

"What is it?" he asked her.

She glanced towards him, and there was something in her eyes just then that… but then she shook her head, smiling.

"It's nothing," she told him. "The name brought back a memory, that is all."

Ah. Zita had enough more than enough memories he was fully aware of that were best left well alone. He didn't need to know any more, not if she didn't want him to. In the next moment she was proffering the second glass towards him and he'd almost put it out of his mind except that the server was looking at her in an oddly intent manner.

Nothing untoward, he would have thought, if his skills at reading people had not diminished. But there was something odd about the man.

"We haven't met before, have we?" he asked.

"Hmm?" said the man. "Oh, I shouldn't think so. I don't usually come to this type of party, ha ha ha."

Riario would have had no disagreement there. But he found himself tilting his head, and Zita must have backed him up because after a sip of red that seemed to go down well she asked,

"Are you sure? You have never been to central or east Africa, have you?"

The server blanched a little. "Eh heh? Well, now that you mention it yes, but it was a long time ago – I'm sure no one out there remembers me now."

He had a brief worried look after that, like he definitely hoped no one remembered him. And Riario was sure that he would have if he'd been at all important, so chances were this man had merely been around at the same time as one of Crossgate's enterprises, likely working something that had gone wrong. He had a distinct scammer vibe, the kind that might infiltrate a gala such as this as a drinks server to get close to someone else to try a scam on; amusing in how pathetic it was, really, as even the best of those inside probably deserved a little scamming here and there to give them a sliver of humility.

"Well in that case we won't mention it," he told the man, and gave him his most charming smile. Then he swallowed from the glass. "Thank you for the drink."

It was mostly lemon, with an undercurrent somewhat like liquorice, but only enough to make it as bitter as the alcohol probably would have made it anyway, and take the edge off the lemon with its sweetness. That alcohol content seemed to be quite generous.

"No problem," said the server, then looked both ways and leant towards him a little. "And if you happen to be in Eritrea in the not-to-distant future and find that the esteemed Abdell Khalifa has forgotten me… please don't remind him."

"Should that happen I've little doubt I'd have forgotten you myself," Riario assured him.

The man looked noticeably relieved. "Oh, good. Well, enjoy the rest of your evening, sir." He nodded towards Riario, then Zita, then scurried away toward the light that came from the door leading back to the main guest room inside.

Riario exchanged a smile with Zita, and a beat of companionable silence before asking,

"Another of your people, I take it?"

"Now that you mention it he does resemble a cousin of mine, in manner if not in looks. How is 'Orpheus'?"

He took another sip. "Quite nice, actually." Even as he said it, he could feel the dizziness. "Though I might have to swallow more pride than I usually do for tonight and admit it's a little strong for my liking."

Zita had already finished half of hers. "This one is fine," she said. "I think perhaps you haven't been eating enough. Again."

She put admonishing emphasis on that last word and he grimaced.

"Take pity on me, Zita. You know I've been unwell."

"Which is why you should eat more, Mr Riario."

"Touché."

He felt eating dimmed his alertness, that was the problem. And since after the birthday party the Other had become remarkably quiet, he'd felt the need to remain on high alert, having no wish to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Even now, he'd left the party as much in fear that the Other might take the opportunity to reappear so he could embarrass their father as much as in contempt for the event itself. He felt more alert out here. Safer.

It had probably been a bad idea to accept even a single drink. He put the half full glass on the wooden rail around the veranda and began to climb back up, only to have Zita press the glass back into his hand.

"Come on," she told him. "Live a little. I'll take responsibility."

She was smiling wide so he did so too, and in camaraderie he finished off the drink as she did hers.

Surely a single glass would not be his downfall, after all.

"Let's go inside," she said.

It was strange. Until she put her arm around him he suddenly found he'd not had the will to move. Something odd was happening, the noise from inside wasn't getting any quieter but he couldn't hear it so well.

Was it Him?

"Zita…" he said. It was the only words he could think of how to say in that moment.

From where she had had herself set on the door she turned towards him.

"Sir?" she asked. Her voice was difficult to hear as well, and echoed like they were in a long, dark tunnel. He head tilted with concern, other arm coming up to his opposite shoulder immediately like she was worried he might faint. "Is something wrong?"

"I…"

This was not good. As he'd feared, the Other must have decided to return. He had no control over him, he couldn't stop him, he'd never even before now become aware that the Other was going to appear, but it must have been the case because why else was everything suddenly becoming so…

So…

Why was his fear decreasing? Zita was in danger if the Other came, no matter what she might have thought about His intentions towards her at least. She tried too hard to see good in him – he'd warned her, warned her even when they'd first met not to expect him to be any better than the men who'd had her captive, even if he happened to be the one who saved her from them. They were killers, all of them. He'd warned her, but that rescue must have made it too hard for her to accept.

So why wasn't he feeling any more that a vague notion that this should be causing him far more concern than it was?

"We'll go around the side," she told him, or that was what it sounded like –

They were already at the corner of the mansion. Had they been walking the whole time he'd been… no, he hadn't been doing anything.

There was something strange going on. He couldn't speak or think properly, but he could see he was still conscious in his body, the Other wasn't there yet. And he wasn't afraid. Just a little dizzy.

"It's only a little further off," Zita was saying, or had said, several paces back and he was only now catching up.

The stars were moving at a steady pace around the sky above them, like they would have if they'd been on a film played in fast-forward, but the earth below them moved slower than before, and every time he blinked those stars returned to their original position and started moving again.

A couple passed them. Riario heard their voices, distorted with hysterical giggling on their part and his own madness, grow louder, like the sound of changing air pressure. Once they were behind them the noise quickly died away, and soon he found himself waiting at the head of the large and spacious car park in front of the garage their own Rolls was parked in.

He waited for the feeling of dizziness to dissipate now that they were stopped. But.

"There," Zita said to him, her voice disturbing the thickness of the air, like he could feel the waves of sound themselves. "I will tell Mr della Rovere you are waiting by the car. He should be along shortly."

"Zita…" his voice came out a slow whisper.

Where was the Other? Was this not his attempt to gain control? Was he having some difficulty in waking, having been asleep so long?

An odd feeling he was too dizzy to identify began to fester at the back of his mind. It was something like the stirrings of paranoia, in a head too clouded to feel it properly.

"Stay here, Girolamo," said Zita. She almost never used his first name like that. "You will need to be strong now."

He had tried to be, in the past. He had tried so hard. But.

She leant forward, hugging him gently. "Forgive me," she whispered.

Once she'd released him and turned away he tried to reach for her, to ask her what she could possibly have done that would warrant his forgiveness. If anything he should have been begging it of her, a thousand times over, for ever getting her involved with Crossgate or the family that ran it.

She'd been in shock. Traumatised. He'd tried to warn her but she hadn't understood, just because they'd liberated that village didn't mean they were any better than those they'd liberated it from. She should have started a new life, somewhere else, but she'd been so eager to stay.

And he was standing there, still, neither inclination nor will to move within him? Why should he have? Oh, there was a reason, he knew that even in this haze, but it escaped him now and that escape felt almost like a mere triviality.

So he found himself gazing up, and watching how long the stars could move for before he had to close his eyes, until another voice said –

"Mr Riario," in a cheerful tone.

It was a man's voice, and familiar in that he'd heard it only minutes ago. The amusingly shady server who'd handed him the drink –

The drink.

Of course. He'd been so focussed on the Other these past few months, so intensely captivated day by day in such rigorous scrutiny of his own every move for sign that that Other might reappear, that he had been neglectful of his attention to the many other dangers in his life.

Was this an assassination? Father had his bodyguards inside, but… but something he was missing. Something obvious he hadn't put together yet…

_Forgive me._

Ah yes, Zita. She was in on this, whatever it was, and even if he'd been in his right mind he knew he wouldn't have blamed her for it – braver than him, to have found the strength to put an end at least to him if not to his father too. Good for her.

Whatever sadness he might have felt there would be happiness too, for the end that was promised awaited him and all would be well. Across the River Phlegethon, squirming in the boiling blood.

He should have tried to move at least, to warn his father somehow, as he was duty-bound. But what could he do? He was drugged, wasn't he?

"If you'd like to come with me, sir, your chariot awaits."

The man put his arm around Riario: an uncomfortable gesture, but he didn't have the will to protest and came along quite quietly. The drug must have had further still to travel, because even that vague understanding that he'd been drugged as part of some plot was vanishing, disappearing in favour of that feeling of pure nothingness.

"And mine," the server continued, now more to himself, "or I swear to god I'll see your dad has those two cunts hung from the same ramparts he sticks my poor head on, there's no way I'm letting them leave me here. Fucking Zoroaster and his schemes, scamming a small-time Kenyan drug-dealer was one thing, if he puts me in the bad books of a fucking psychopathic warlord I'm going to end up living in an igloo in the frozen north with only the penguins for company."

"Penguins live in the frozen south, Amerigo, not the north."

That voice.

With the last of his grasp on reality, Riario recognised that voice and clung to it, like one of the souls already in the river latching on to Dante's boat.

"Either way, it'll be an igloo or death for me, and you can tell Zoroaster he can expect to live at whichever fucking pole I'm not if this goes south. He can try putting the ring he wants for his lovely bride on a flipper, the smarmy shit."

As the other man rambled a pair of more confident hands took Riario from him, and he found himself looking into those bright, world-destroying eyes once more. Eyes he'd feared had long lost interest in the insane wretch he'd met in a hellish house in Tuscany.

"Zo only introduced us, he has nothing to do with this." A lock of hair was brushed from Riario's forehead. "I just needed someone Riario wouldn't recognise through connection to me. As I understand it, he's certainly done his research. Anyway, I'll drop you off in Sacramento and then we'll be on our way, now help me get him into the car."

The man – 'Amerigo' – sighed, and Riario heard a car door open.

But the one in front of him put both hands on either side of his head to focus his attention, and stared deeply into his eyes.

"Hello, my Lord of Shallot," Leonardo da Vinci said, grinning. "Sorry to have kept you waiting."

He leaned in.

"It's time for me to try my hand at curse-breaking."

The last of Riario's conscious thought before the drug took over completely and saw him lying across the back seat of some car he hadn't even noticed, was the surprise at the unfamiliar feeling of hope.

But then, he'd been too intoxicated to remember not to.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Time went as quickly or as slowly as the drug made it seem so, he could not have guessed how long it might have been. He knew that at at least two other points he'd been made to drink something again, just as he'd felt his head begin to clear, and at least once more there'd been a needle in his arm. Other than that little passed through his mind but the vague awareness of motion; of being moved within a vehicle – a car…

A plane? Well, da Vinci was a resourceful man. That was, he supposed, the 'little' else that came to him, a kind of excitement that he and the artist had been reunited, and that the latter had something planned for him he couldn't guess at.

An odd thought to be having, admittedly. But then this strangeness was not entirely strange to him.

Nor had it been even when that last time had released the darkness in his soul into the world. If he could but dare to imagine the artist had an idea on how to seal it back up again, the excitement would have been well warranted.

" – know you can survive without me for a few months, you were getting along well enough before we met, as I'm sure Giuliano will be happy to remind you."

The words flew into his head from the haze and he struggled to make sense of them.

"You promised me this, so don't get pissy with me now – okay, sorry, sorry, that was uncalled for… yes, yes, I'm sure you should have. You'll know better for next time, I have no doubt."

He tried to open his eyes, but the lids were too heavy for him.

"Lorenzo, I said this was a difficult matter and I meant it, in the sense that what you want to hear is a conversation my father would probably advise you not to have… No, don't go getting hysterical, if it works out the way I hope it will it will be well worth it and no one will be on the hook for anything. I swear."

With a special effort, he managed to pull back those lids and blinked softly against the harshness of the light. There was a strong scent of wood in the air, wood and something sweet like incense. He was lying on a bed, beneath a blanket.

There was a fire in the room. A man's shadow swept over the flickering light on the wooden wall as he paced back and forth.

"Yes… Yes… Yes, I understand, believe me, but I really need you to trust me on this one… if there's an emergency you can get hold of me the same way you're doing now… I promise. Is that your brother in the background? Tell him he's a wanker, won't you?... all right, all right, I'm sorry."

The pacing stopped abruptly. Somehow in that hazy vision he saw the eyes that haunted him staring at his own.

"Ah. Listen, Lorenzo, I have to go, there's a matter that requires my attention. Give my love to all and sundry, won't you? Okay, bye."

Riario heard a barely audible beep and a dull clatter of a hard object placed on a wooden surface. Curiously, he tried to move his arms to hoist himself up to sitting position, but they were slow to respond and far too weak.

"Hey, hey. Don't try that, it's better to just sleep it off."

A few footsteps on bare floorboards came his way, and then all at once there he was, kneeling at his bedside. A moment later Riario felt the cool fingertips against his neck, feeling for his pulse.

"Though you do seem to be all right. How are you feeling?"

There was a loaded question. Before Riario could even begin to think of an answer he saw the eyes seeing him tilt in another way and the voice he'd longed to hear for so long spoke again.

"I suppose I should make sure: it is _you_ the host persona that I'm talking to and not our guardian minotaur, right?"

Riario smiled.

"Yeah," said da Vinci. "Yeah, I think it is you. I don't know how to explain it but I feel like I can tell at once, even after knowing you for such a short time. Even without that eye-thing." He frowned. "I wonder why it always happens like that – the redness in the eyes when you become him. I agree it's psychosomatic but there has to be a reason for such a pronounced response – "

The artist continued speaking but to Riario's ears it sounded as though he trailed off, the question he'd brought up regarding the matter of his eyes so suddenly reminding him of the very answer to the artist's question that he felt like whatever wooden walls surrounded them had crumbled away and returned him to the darkness of the cave; the heat, the sweat, the cold and the exhaustion pulling on every muscle in his body like invisible strings.

He felt, more than remembered, the near-constant needling against his tired eyes by the dim candlelight punctuated and pronounced like clockwork by the lukewarm trickles of water that ran down his face like beetles, salt biting into them with rough-edged pincers.

_"You have come into the shadows at the centre of the Labyrinth."_

"Riario?"

It had been far from the worst pain he'd ever experienced. And yet so constant, so relentless, he hadn't had the space to strategise, and hadn't that always been what had saved him in the past? Kept him from doing something stupid like violently attacking the source of his agony?

_"Who are you? What is your purpose? How many people are in this room?"_

Every wrong answer earned him another bite. Every right answer the same. Even if they'd wanted the truth he couldn't have given it after a while, not when he couldn't see the room beyond the tears and the deceitful flames.

_"One. One. We are one."_

Until…

"Shit. Okay, that was not a good starter question. Hey. Hey, listen to me, Riario, listen to the sound of my voice."

_"Who are you? What is your purpose? How many people are in this room?"_

There and then, while he was wherever da Vinci had brought him and only in the cave inside his own head it was mere ghosts of the straps across his arms and chest he felt restricting him from reaching up to his face to tear off the contraption keeping his eyes open that wasn't really there either. But his eyes wouldn't close. And his arms…

The cuffs around his wrists were soft but they were more than memory, unlike the force that kept his eyelids open.

"Listen to me, listen to me. You're all right. You're all right. No one is going to hurt you here, Girolamo, I swear to you—"

"No," the words escaped his lips without thought. The shock of having that sudden memory returned by da Vinci's innocent-enough question was beginning to ebb. "No one calls me that."

Only his father and uncle; rarely enough from the former as opposed to the usual 'You' that the twins must have had about an equal tally of uttering it. Maybe his cousins used it too, but he tried to avoid them. Either way, it sounded wrong coming out of the mouth of da Vinci.

"What, your name?" asked the artist. His eyes rolled. "All right, _Riario_. No one is going to hurt you, I promise. Not even you, and don't think I forgot that stunt you tried to pull at your grandmother's house."

A brief memory surfaced of a plunge backwards from the eyes whose owner had now caught him fast and firm; a memory fragmented because of drugs and because he had become the Other so soon afterwards.

That had been undignified of him. Rude, really, to try and leave the conversation with no explanation or apology. There had just been this terrible feeling of now or never, and before anyone else got hurt… well.

Well, sometimes he wondered why he even bothered trying.

Still, he felt like he was at least halfway back to his senses in the wake of the sudden flashback, which there was no point thinking about in these circumstances because even he knew enough to know the difference between a trigger and a root cause.

He also knew, in light of that, that not even da Vinci could help him, as he could guess the man was either going to attempt or pretend to attempt. But he was willing to let him make that attempt nonetheless.

He really did like the man.

"Now, why is that memory worth a smile?" the artist asked him curiously, so he supposed he must have been smiling.

"Where are we?" he asked.

There were no sounds coming from outside, outside of the whistling of the wind; neither birds nor traffic, nor the voices of people walking past.

Da Vinci glanced towards the door briefly.

"Somewhere safe," he said.

"Safe from… ?"

"Safe from your father finding us," da Vinci said plainly. "And safe from you or Caliban hurting yourself or others."

"Wrong, and wrong, Artista."

Girolamo chuckled, quite sure that da Vinci could understand for himself what he meant by that he didn't elaborate further, but the artist gave him a considering look and went on,

"Well, as for the second I suppose we'll just have to see who of the three of us has the most ingenuity. As for the first, I've had time enough by now to become quite familiar with the histories of your father and his enterprises,"

'Enterprises' was said as though it left a bad taste in da Vinci's mouth, and Girolamo felt the familiar stirrings of twisting shame.

" – and frankly I've little doubt your father's whole schtick involves gaining control of people who can do his thinking for him; namely you, who he has now been deprived of. Of course that begs the question, who will he turn to without you there when he needs to solve the mystery of your disappearance?"

Girolamo knew quite well who his father would turn to in all likelihood; a certain philandering ex-military 'fixer' by the name of Rodrigo. Him, Girolamo wasn't too worried about, but his connections…

First he'd see how much da Vinci truly had prepared to face the beast he'd pitted himself against.

"Who do you think?" he asked.

"Well, I think it's safe to say it won't be your uncle," said da Vinci, with a snort. "Who is the only one I know he's connected to who I'd be worried about, so I suppose it doesn't matter. Though, for the sake of being thorough I suppose I'd hazard as a guess… Colonel Rodrigo? I imagine he'd go to him before any of the other possibilities in these circumstances. Ferrante's in no position to help him now and Urbino can't be trusted."

There was a slight smirk at the mention of Ferrante, which, from what he knew of the recent situation, Girolamo thought well-warranted. As for Urbino, whether he was trustworthy or not Girolamo had the feeling his father might indeed go to him. Not for help in solving his son's disappearance, but because they met up every now and again anyway to swap… materials they happened to have similar tastes in.

It wasn't his place to judge. Maybe his father would be too paranoid because of this anyway, he might have just stuck to dealing with Rodrigo.

And after only four months of research hampered by crisis for his employer, Girolamo sincerely doubted even da Vinci would know anything about –

"Of course, the only real problem with that is if he gets Admiral Cereta involved."

For a moment the artist's words left Girolamo speechless with only _'how could he possibly know?_ ' in his head. However, thinking back on what the most common avenues of the discovery of this kind of thing was – and the easiest for da Vinci to travel along, he felt his body relax. Although if that was because the answer was 'relaxing' or if it was because it was anything but, and his overwhelmed mind was merely shutting down his capacity to worry too much about it, again, that he couldn't even tell. But he found his lips moving and near-whispering the words.

"Zita told you."

Da Vinci looked him straight in the eye.

"She has more at stake in this than I do. It seemed to behove me to listen to what she had to say."

Girolamo remembered briefly one of the many nervous pleas he'd hated himself for having made Zita look so scared to mention.

_"She could help you, Mr Riario. Go to her."_

Laura couldn't have helped him. Only been dragged down into whatever circle of Hell the rest of them would be and were being held in. The same Hell he'd pulled Zita into. He could believe, sometimes, that it was better than the one she'd left, but Laura was a different story. She was a woman of status, of power, and necessary in the position she held.

And even Zita had flames more agonising yet to fall in if his father had any inkling of her involvement in da Vinci's scheme. Perhaps even only if he felt she'd allowed this to happen. Perhaps even only if she remained in his vicinity, and Girolamo was not there to act as a buffer.

As if he could hear some of these thoughts, da Vinci cocked his head and asked,

"Are you angry, that I brought her into this?"

Before that godforsaken cave had burned his eyes away and revealed a new pair belonging to a new person underneath, he would probably have been very angry.

Now…

He would have gotten her killed sooner or later anyway. Part of him felt like he already had, even as she'd been alive and talking to him. Even as she'd handed him that drink.

And yet, da Vinci smiled at him.

"You _are_ angry. But I get the feeling you're trying to pretend you're not."

What? Was that a wild stab in the dark on da Vinci's part? Or was it part of a longer plan, putting the idea into his head here where he'd later develop on it as subtly as he may to try and make Girolamo think whatever he wanted him to think?

What was da Vinci's play here, really? He must have known the idea of a 'cure' was so unlikely it was a waste of time to even consider it, so was this the first step in 'control'.

Girolamo liked the artist. He really did. But he in no way trusted him not to try and manipulate him into doing things he really didn't want to do. Da Vinci's goal in all of this was to destroy his father after all, and he couldn't forget it.

Because he couldn't let anything happen to his father.

He didn't want anything to happen to his father.

He loved him. There was a deafening, repeating mantra in his head like an alarm that told him over and over again that he did.

"Angry?" he repeated, as if considering the concept when his thoughts refused to order themselves enough to do so. "Would it make you feel better to believe that that hadn't been sucked up by the other one?"

Da Vinci rolled his eyes.

"Would it make you feel better if it actually worked like that?" he shot back. "We both know you're not the Jekyll to his Hyde, not two beings who were once one broken in two – you are a whole mind as is he. Those minds may be linked, but they're not waiting to be fused back together again, since they were never 'one' in the first place."

No. No, that wasn't true. He'd been different before the cave. He knew he had. But da Vinci kept on talking.

"He developed, separately to you, to protect your mind from the situation you found yourself in. A person who could cope with what you couldn't. But he wasn't designed with conscious thought, so he has his own problems the ideal protector wouldn't have."

"Ideally," said Girolamo bitterly, "there wouldn't have been a protector, because I'd have been able to live the life fate handed to me like an adult."

"Told you you were angry," said da Vinci. "Now look. As I've been considering this problem I've become more and more convinced, as my initial impression of the situation told me, that you and your cousins need to present a united front against the twins if this is going to end, and it needs to be now because you've already reached the crisis point, twice that I know of."

He took a deep breath, and Girolamo was curious at the flash of guilt or regret or something like it in his eyes that briefly appeared.

"I can't promise you that I can make things all right for you, not at this stage. But I do think, together, we can stop your father and uncle from continuing to hurt anyone else – if you can bring yourself to make the attempt, and I think you can."

"And after that?"

Da Vinci frowned. Girolamo persisted.

"After Francesco and my father magically disappear? I'm culpable in everything my father's done; and those aren't crimes they let you walk from, even if you testify against your associates. Even if you've had a bad few years. And even if I was set free, what would I do? My skill set is rather selective."

"Oh, you could do a million things," the artist said dismissively. "– when I hacked your personal computer I saw your work and you more than have the talent. Sure, your CV might raise a few eyebrows, but that stuff's easy to get around; we'll cross it when we come to it. For now, we need to get you on the same page as your alter ego at least, before we go forward."

"I see you have it all figured out."

"Surprised?"

Honestly, Girolamo was finding it difficult to describe how he felt about this. Certainly it was one of the nicer captivities he'd had. Possibly the nicest, if it continued along like this without any physical violence on da Vinci's part. Certainly he was the most appealing captor.

But it was inconvenient, to say the least. Father was going to be very angry, angry and vulnerable. And even though he wanted to believe da Vinci had a chance at doing what he wanted, he had the feeling the artist had a better chance of bringing down the twins either way than he did of making anything useful of Girolamo's mess.

"No one has it all figured out," he said, because if there was one fatal flaw he'd seen in his Artista right from the beginning, it was hubris. "Only the Almighty. And He will not help me, or the one you call 'Caliban'."

He wouldn't have said he was surprised that da Vinci rolled his eyes. Neither could he say he didn't feel a shiver in his heart when he leant closer, balancing himself with his hand on the wooden headboard above Girolamo's head. He could feel the warmth from the man's skin as he spoke.

"Given 'His' track record, I'm not surprised. But I will help you, Riario. This isn't the kind of thing I leave unfinished."

Girolamo was pleased to hear da Vinci make the all-but-stated comparison between himself and the artist's other projects, rather than his people, because it was safer for da Vinci if he did so.

Wanting to build on that, and with a little playful vengeance in his thoughts he shot forward without warning, as far as the restraints would let him and snapped his jaw shut right where da Vinci's ear had just been.

The other man flew back with quite excellent reflexes; even half-drugged Girolamo was fast. For a split second his long hair covered his face, obscuring the reaction in his eyes until he'd regained his balance and stared back at Girolamo; not without surprise but to his delight not exactly stunned beyond belief either.

No, he looked wary, but there was no drop in his determination.

All the same…

"Oh, did you only expect that kind of behaviour from 'Caliban'?" Girolamo asked him sweetly. "Look at you. Like a researcher who's discovered a new animal, poking and prodding him in his cage. You could write a book, couldn't you, Artista? Pop-science with original illustrations from the author, as long as you keep the 'Tempest' contained."

He looked down at the black-leather padded cuffs around his wrists with the intent to describe their limitations just in case da Vinci was under any illusions as to how familiar he was with standard…

He blinked and looked at the restraints again. There was lettering on them, upside-down from where he looked at it, but however hard he turned it around in his mind he could only read the words as saying: 'SLUT' and 'WHORE'.

He kept staring though.

Da Vinci held his hands up and took a deep breath.

"Okay, I can explain," he said.

_Oh, good_ , Girolamo thought. _It's not just me._

"Look, you are probably more aware than most about the planning that not only has to go in to kidnapping the trained killer son of a sociopathic mass-murderer, but also has to go in to covering your tracks? Part of that is using as much of your own assets as you can without going to outside sources, and Zo and I… happened to be in contact already with someone with access to medical-grade restraints."

There was a pause.

"I'll admit I knew she didn't use them for medical purposes, but in all fairness I'd never seen the ones with the inscription at her place before. If you could just try to ignore it…" he added as though the idea he'd do anything else was utterly absurd.

"You couldn't have painted over the letters or anything?" Girolamo asked.

"Fuck no, this shit was expensive enough just to rent. Anyway, what were you saying before?"

Girolamo looked down at the cuffs one more time before he leaned back against the bed in deference to his exhausted body and laughed until he could barely breathe.

 

*~*~*

 

There was wind howling outside the cabin the Worm had woken up in.

Caliban recognised it as soon as he opened his eyes. The Worm's memories were strange things, not like a film he watched as they were happening, rather he somehow just knew what had happened as soon as he woke, like those memories had been downloaded into his. But the Worm's own actions didn't interest him, 'Ariel' had been moping and whining as he always did – well, until the end anyway. Props to the Worm, he relished that leap backwards Leonardo had had to make, but one little flash of having a spine was hardly enough to redeem his 'better half' in Caliban's eyes.

No, it was Leonardo that interested him, if not as much as Caliban had been hoping him to. Honestly. He'd been such a _good_ boy – staying well away so dear Daddy didn't decide to scoop out some of his and the Worm's shared brain before the artist had the chance to do whatever zany scheme he had in mind.

He'd had to go to the trouble twice of surreptitiously taking over for the Worm when the piece of shit coward got too emo about his sad, sad life and started thinking about opening up their shared veins again – get some endorphins running and return their body to its previous position so as not to arouse Ariel's suspicions.

And it had taken four fucking months!

Truly, he would have loved to see Leonardo's face if he'd decided to show up and put an end to the whole Medici-Ferrante fiasco with a knife to both of the main players' faces.

The wind outside whistled sharper when a door opened beyond the warm wooden room Caliban was lying in. A draught followed from the gap beneath his own door, and then he heard the other shut.

A moment later the door to his room was unlocked, and Leonardo came in carrying a brown paper bag. He had it covering his face on Caliban's side, so – like the arrogant bastard he was – he wouldn't have even seen the main threat in the house should Caliban have chosen to slip out of his sex-slave manacles.

Well, that might have taken some doing; at least one wrist dislocation, maybe both – but he could have done it if he'd wanted to.

It wasn't until he'd put the paper bag down that Leonardo turned to check on his captive(s) and when he saw Caliban staring back at him he jumped.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" he hissed.

"Did you get everything we needed, darling?" Caliban asked him. Then laughed, because the artist's expression was priceless.

Leonardo shook his head; in exasperation rather than in the negative, pulled the chair from the desk he'd dropped his bag onto and plonked it down next to the bed, then plonked himself down on it, breathing a little heavily.

He snatched a little pen-light from his pocket and shined it in Caliban's right eye, then his left, which he endured because it wasn't worth the trouble not to but seriously, didn't his eyes look sore enough?

They felt it. They always did. Like the Worm was fighting against the idea of giving him a window to the world. Subconsciously, of course, because the little shit couldn't face him consciously, but there was still some fight in him, he'd give him that.

"And your pupils are okay," Leonardo announced. "I wish I could say the same for the rest of your eyes, Caliban."

"I thought you liked my eyes, you faggot," Caliban said, faux-offended.

Another eye-roll and Leonardo sighed.

"I prefer the sclera white to red," he said. "And as for your charming personality, that could do with a little brightening up as well. How do you like your new home?"

"A wooden shack in the wilds of Alaska? It's my dream."

Leonardo snapped his fingers. "Aha!" he said, grinning. "We're over thirty miles from the border with Alaska, as it happens." Then he frowned. "Props to you though, for figuring out that much."

It hadn't been that difficult, what with the inclement weather he could hear outside and at this time of year; plus they'd been in California, so he'd guessed the artist would have had less trouble moving him within national borders, even with the aid of a plane.

Crossgate didn't have any presence in Canada though, so it made sense he'd simply drive him across the border once the plane got in so he'd have a shield of extradition in place in case they were discovered. A stop-gap measure, but you could always use an extra stop-gap when dealing with Crossgate.

All that said, Caliban wasn't sure whether or not the artist's 'props' had been more backhanded than not.

"Did you think I was 'the dumb one'?" he asked, same mocking tone of voice.

Leonardo seemed to consider this. "Well, intelligence has a strong genetic factor," he said. "And I guess you and Ariel have the same genetics. So I'm not considering either of you 'dumb'."

"Or dumber than the other, at any rate," Caliban added for him.

Not having the nausea and confusion from the drug that the Worm had had now that it had faded from their system, it was easier for him to sit up a little and take another look at the totally-not-suspicious leather restraints. "If you still expect me to believe your intentions are honourable…"

"Oh, fuck off, you have Ariel's memories, you know why they say that."

"Because a degenerate homosexual is planning to turn me and my piece-of-shit alternate personality into his personal slut-whore? As experienced as _you_ are in the sodomy department I'm sure you'll have us both turned within the week – blindfolded and crawling at your side on a leash like your favourite bitch – I say favourite because as it's you I'm sure you have a veritable harem, but maybe since there's two of us in here the syphilis will take twice as long to rot our brain!"

He couldn't hold his laughter in anymore and began to shake hysterically with it. He barely heard the artist sigh over the sound of his own laughter.

"I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out this is you saying all this, not me."

At length Caliban trailed off into a chuckle. It wasn't that he thought this was actually Leonardo's plan, but he hadn't missed the little signs of sexual attraction to his and the Worm's body, perhaps even more than just their body – because the artist was a freak as well as a pervert.

He wouldn't have put it past him to give in and fuck him after a while. Maybe he could manipulate him better if he did, it might have been an idea to try seducing him…

The only problem with that was what the Worm might do.

"And with your completely heterosexual fantasies out of the way," Leonardo continued, breaking Caliban away from his thoughts, "It's time for our first foray into behavioural therapy."

With eyes so sore the blinking Caliban did in surprise made tears fall, and his eyelashes clumped together and made the lids even more difficult to open. But the surprise didn't dissipate.

"Therapy?" a single snort left his throat. ""I'm not the one who needs or could use it – try to get the Worm to cry and talk about his feelings if you want to play around with someone's mind so much; I'm only here to make sure he doesn't get us killed."

Leonardo smirked.

"Oh, you're not getting let off that easily, Caliban, and I think you know it. You've only spent _half_ the time since you woke up laughing like a madman, so something must be getting you down."

He was in a more sober mood, now Leonardo had pointed it out. He blamed the Worm.

"What's the use in trying to change me though?" he asked. "I'm only a protective construct."

"We're all constructs of one form or another," said Leonardo. "Now," he sat up and slapped his hands down onto his knees, "with that in mind, I want you to think of a bad memory; yours, Ariel's or both, from as long ago as you like as long as it was before we met. And I want you to tell me about it."

Caliban released more tears as his eyes narrowed.

"A bad memory?" he repeated.

"Something that upset you."

Upset? Caliban didn't get upset. That was the whole point of Caliban.

So he just laughed. The artist looked at him without changing his expression though, calmly and patiently waiting for his longer than usual laughing fit to pass, and something in that look made a dark wisp arise in Caliban's heart that, had he felt it from the Worm, he would have described as 'fear'. He was struggling to breathe by the time the laughter stopped.

And then Leonardo said, "Ariel tried to make me believe you were the only one of the two of you capable of rage. I don't think he was lying, but he was wrong. Conversely, you may not have the same problems with fear and guilt that Ariel does, but that doesn't mean you can't feel them at all."

Wrong. It was the Artista who was wrong.

Caliban didn't fear.

Caliban did _not_ fear.

He remembered the pitiless hand of dearest Daddy closing vice-like around the hair of his younger self's head; the younger Ariel, and he remembered feeling the hatred the Worm would not allow himself, but the only fear had been the Worm's. Like a machine that could not be reasoned with the man had tugged and tugged and tightened his grip, screaming at him everything he was going to suffer for the transgression that had lead to that first time they'd found themselves a captive. Screaming until his scalp had ripped and bled and pulled tighter for every scream he'd heard echo him.

Caliban hadn't been afraid. Wouldn't have been, rather, because he didn't truly wake until the cave.

"Ah," said Leonardo, in a way that made his heart beat faster yet. "You _have_ thought of one. Tell me about it."

Caliban shook his head.

"I wasn't afraid," he said, almost soft enough to be a whisper. "And I'm not now."

Leonardo put his hand on Caliban's forehead, and as he reached towards his head and with that other memory now in his thoughts Caliban found himself flinching as much as he could.

Ignoring that, Leonardo smiled, smoothing a lock of hair with a gentle touch.

"You're wrong about that one too, Caliban," he said. "Now, shall we begin?"

 

 

*~*~*

 


End file.
